It’s the winter of 2005.
I’m the new head of global consumer product and marketing at Pinnacle, a video hardware company.
I just flew from California to join our annual European Sales Meeting in Le Touquet, France.
On the program, a bunch of presentations, an award dinner, sand yachting, a lot of informal “boozed” conversations.
After a couple of days, we all leave with different impressions.
Some won’t remember anything. Others learned that sports and alcohol don’t mix well together.
My key takeaway is that I have severe headwinds and many non-believers in our product and marketing strategy.
A handful of influential sales leaders have openly raised their concerns about how competition beats us.
According to them, we’re heading into a brick wall if I don’t completely change our product and marketing strategy.
I’m starting to visualize what failure would look like.
What if the sales team is right? Is our Company going to survive another failed launch? Will we need to do layoffs? Will I be out of a job in six months? How will I cope with it? What will happen to my family?
The spiral of concerning questions starts to feel overwhelming. I am “catastrophizing.”
Does such a situation feel familiar to you?
It certainly did for me until I realized that I needed to pause, step back, and seriously question the assumptions leading me to the worst-case conclusion whenever a situation felt desperate.
Here’s how it works:
If you recognize it early, failure is not a certainty. It’s just one of many scenarios.
Then, you can apply a more objective point of view to every relevant scenario.
Ask yourself critical questions like:
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- What reasons do I have to think we’ll fail or succeed?
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- What needs to happen for me to be right or wrong about each scenario?
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- How else could I interpret the situation based on current evidence?
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- If such a worst-case scenario wins, what actions should we take to mitigate the problem?
The goal is to develop a more balanced view of the situation based on objective and noticeable evidence.
It takes some practice, but it will boost your performance and mental health.
So, stop systematically jumping to the worst conclusion. Instead, turn it into a scenario among others.
You’ll make much smarter decisions and will noticeably reduce your anxiety levels!
And if you wonder what happened to my worst-case situation at Pinnacle, some of the business failure materialized. Yet, we leveraged it to pivot our strategy and successfully enter adjacent market segments.
Soon enough, we adapted to the challenging times, healed our wounds and ended up joyously sharing our recovery stories at the next annual meeting!