The Art of Attachment and Detachment
Innovation is emotion-driven, and it's OK to have loved and lost
Welcome to the latest entry in The Workaround. You’re in good company with thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and innovators!
I’m Bob, your host. My mission here is to share personal, behind-the-scenes stories of the ups and downs of my career leading tech startups and corporate innovation.
I write to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Here we go…
It was exciting to go public with two new businesses last week, but not all news is good…
Earlier this year, we shut down a separate software product I had spent much of my 2023 working on.
It would have been the most meaningful product launch in my life, aimed at addressing one of the largest social challenges of our time. This would be my ultimate contribution to the world, bigger than anything I’d ever done.
Potential customers at some of the largest companies in the world opened the door to hear our pitch. Feedback was very positive. Meetings led to more meetings. Proposals were requested and quickly sent—at a price we were told was well within available budgets.
But they didn’t sign on the bottom line. Customers who smiled warmly and cheered our initiative suddenly ghosted us again and again. After decades of pitching good, bad, and ugly new products, I had never seen anything like it.
I seriously questioned humanity. There were some dark days.
Then I woke up.
I remembered that this is the way of startups or any new idea.
My attachment to the mission and the chance to make a positive dent in the universe had blinded me to the reality of corporate politics, which became obvious once I finally detached and viewed cold, hard reality like a business scientist.
It’s a tricky balance that innovators must constantly juggle. Our passion for an idea and desire to win motivates us to move mountains. But we must bring impartiality when something isn’t working—to watch our ideas crushed by customer feedback. Only then can we learn and get excited again the next day.
I first encountered this art of optimistic realism, or attachment and detachment, as a rookie brand manager pitching Church-goers in rural Ohio years before.
Concept Testing in Churches
When you think about new product development for Tide Laundry Detergent, a multi-billion-dollar brand at Procter & Gamble, you might assume that scores of brilliant scientists spend years engineering special molecules in a lab. Once they forge a solution for whiter whites or fewer stains, they spend millions in market research to build the perfect marketing message.
Well, yes…and no.
Scientists develop ideas in the lab but don’t go too far until they test the benefits with customers. This market research starts with something really simple: writing down the idea and showing it to people.
I did this regularly while an Assistant Brand Manager at Tide in the early 2000s. One of my jobs was leading our Tide Liquid business, and our key strategy was continually upgrading our formula. The workflow was pretty simple: I’d meet with my R&D lead, who would brief me on a formula improvement they had in mind, and a small group of us would write up various ways of positioning the new product feature into a marketing message.
These “Concepts” would have a title, an insight into a problem, and a description of our solution. We’d write a dozen or so. They would look something like this:
We’d print a bunch of copies and drive an hour or two outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, to gather feedback from women who bought laundry detergent. Often, this was in partnership with a research company that would recruit a church and its parishioners to stop by the rec room for a few minutes in exchange for a donation to their cause.
I’d sit across from a volunteer, ask a few icebreakers, and then hand over a piece of paper with a concept like this printed on it. She would read it and then share her thoughts, reactions, likes, dislikes, and questions. Then I’d pass another concept over, and we’d rinse and repeat.
Through these discussions, my heart broke frequently. Ideas that I thought would be winners crashed and burned, and my high hopes for coming up with the next great Tide innovation were dashed.
I couldn’t argue with their feedback or beg them to reconsider. I couldn’t write off this church as a parish of anomaly and book another attempt in a different zip code.
Instead, I learned to listen. I asked better questions, saw the folly of my positioning statements, and gathered new insights to improve our next round of concepts back at the office.
And they got better! The next research trip improved, as did the one after that. We’d gain the confidence to spend larger sums developing our formulas and researching potential sales impact. Agencies were onboarded, retailers were pitched, and the latest Tide upgrade—in my case, Tide Clean Rinse—would eventually appear in millions of U.S. homes. Sales and market share improved. There was much rejoicing.
Learning from Tough Careers
We innovators can learn from our brethren in other demanding careers where the art of Attachment and Detachment are critical to success.
The best salespeople know this. Like fearless hunters, they pursue the big account, dreaming of exceeding their quota and flying to President’s Club in Hawaii. And yet, they know, most of the time, that customer won’t return their email—much less buy. Rejection is normal.
They learn to tap into the excitement of possibilities without falling in love with the potential outcome. This is why sales is a great early-career path for almost anyone interested in business. It can beat your ego into submission as you become comfortable hearing “no.”
The best creatives know this. My daughter, Ella, is in college studying animation. The other weekend, in conversation, she said, “My professor had me completely re-do my mid-term project.” I feared for her and asked how she felt about that. Ella replied, “Oh, it’s fine. He’s a great professor, and I didn’t love it anyway.” I learned that she and her friends have gotten very good at watching their work critiqued by professors and peers—and they look forward to this. It’s the only way to improve.
I saw this first-hand at my digital agency. Every day, our creative teammates poured enormous hours into their very personal work. And at least 95% of their effort was trashed at some point along the journey from idea to execution.
Salespeople, creatives, innovators, consultants, and startup founders pour so much emotion into their jobs—but to get really good at the work, they must unplug from it along the way. If your job involves doing anything new to the world, there’s a big lesson to learn from them.
Balancing Attachment and Detachment
On the one hand, emotional attachment is almost always a key driver of success. I’ve yet to meet a successful founder who emotionally floated above the fray of the day-in, day-out grind to get something off the ground. Why would anyone work so hard for such long odds if they didn’t truly care? Passion for the project gets you up in the morning, powers you through all the hurdles life puts in your path, and helps you sleep at night when your mind is racing with worries.
Your attachment also inspires other people. Prospective clients, employees, and partners are attracted to that sparkle in your eye—sometimes, they want to bring a little of your energy into their lives. Your passion can inspire them to volunteer their time, work for less money, and put up with a half-assed product.
On the other hand, you need the emotional detachment of a cyborg to balance out your restless passions. This means the willingness to understand why something isn’t working, throw everything you’ve done in the trash bin, and tell the world you’re pivoting—again.
Balance is the art of the craft. I’ve found a few things that have helped me along the way across many projects:
Know your Ego - We all have these voices in our heads that want to protect us. That’s the Ego. It gets built up by all our desires and doesn’t want to admit failure—both to others and to itself. See this happening within you and be bigger than this mental blocker. Meditation helps.
Keep a Journal - Spend 5-10 minutes each evening recounting what happened over the day. Writing aids processes and thinking. It’s also hard to lie or hype yourself in these moments and easier to gain perspective. And journals become a treasure to look back on and laugh about years later.
Trust the Process - Before starting your venture, look in the mirror and this: The final product will look much different than this initial idea…so let’s go collect some “no’s” and start learning. The more reps, the more knowledge, and the higher the chance of lucking into success.
“Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.” - Eckhart Tolle
In startup circles today, we’d call my Tide process “Lean”—the first step in a Minimum Viable Product. Interestingly, I tried to build a startup version of my Tide process in what I called the Minimum Viable Concept Test (MVC). At the time, I was working at a VC firm and frequently saw founders spend many months and dollars building something they could have seen the flaws in by just putting a paper description in front of their customers.
I did about 20 tests for startups but found that most founding teams were looking for “validation” that their current idea was a winner. They had so identified with their solution that it was hard for them to see the flaws—even with real data and big insights in helpful PowerPoint form. Almost none made adjustments based on the hundreds of customers who shared invaluable feedback. And, by and large, the startups that scored poorly failed to win in the market. I stopped pursuing my MVC Test company because it was clear my customers weren’t ready for it.
Despite all of my previous screw-ups—and starting a company to help other startups avoid them—oops, I did it again in 2023…I lost my balance, went too heavily with my passions, and wasted significant time and energy.
This is the ultimate lesson: We are human and can fall in our striving. But most of the time, it’s not a far drop, and it’s better to try to make a dent in the universe and fail than not to try at all.
How we might work together…
Are you interested in launching your own consulting or service business or need help taking your current services business to the next level? Fleet is our holding company for services, and we’re actively looking to build business partnerships with winning leaders. Let’s talk!
My team and I lead Hearty, a boutique recruiting service that helps tech-forward companies hire proven talent. Our senior team of operators sources and screens, saving you time and money. When you need help, let’s chat.
Need help with a software project? Perhaps a product MVP, a project that requires outside help, or a fractional CTO for key strategic decisions? Our team at Shipwright Studio has worked together to build multiple successful startups, and we love helping leaders turn their dreams into reality. We're the team our clients trust for software built to last.
Looking for Influencer Marketing and Content Creation? The team from our previous company is back by popular demand with A2 Influence. We’re ramping up now and would love to share more.
Feel free to schedule time together during my Open Hours for questions, feedback, networking, or any other topic!
BONUS: Cool Content of the Week
A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…
Two Worlds, One Sun
As my wife and I sat on our rooftop Monday, watching our city darken under the solar eclipse, we tried to imagine what it would be like on a planet with less sunlight. The conversation reminded me of one of the most marvelous pictures I have ever seen: This NASA image of a sunset on Earth alongside a sunset on Mars.
This reminds me of the magnificence of the universe and what will be here long after we are gone. But it is also a testament to the achievements of humankind and the Earth that produced us—we’re touching multiple planets now! At a moment when we tend to fear technology and what it has turned us into, taking a moment to appreciate what we have accomplished can provide much-needed perspective…