Chronically Unqualified (On Purpose)
Because growth doesn’t happen when you already know what you’re doing
Not a single hand was raised. An awkward silence washed over the class on day one.
Finally, I raised my hand to answer: “the present value of their discounted future cash flows”.
As the only undergrad in the room, I’d sat at the back of the room on purpose. Now I could feel 75 MBA students turn to look at me, then look back at the professor as he nodded yes and continued the lecture.
I took a deep breath and the imposter syndrome faded away.
As an undergraduate, I had managed to talk my way into an MBA-only class. The average student was 5 years older than me. These were “real adults” with actual work experience!
I thought I’d just be a 21-year-old trying to keep up. What I didn’t realize was that being slightly out of my depth was right where I should be.
I did more than keep up. I thrived in the class and had fun learning how to develop a pitch and demo for a tech startup.
More importantly, I was reminded that growth accelerates when you take on things you’re not quite ready for. It’s not easy. It takes effort. Pushing yourself to take on new challenges can be uncomfortable in the short term but it’s the only real way to develop and grow.
If you stop actively pushing, inertia takes over. Comfort follows and stagnation isn’t far behind.
The first time someone explained this idea succinctly was during a college internship.
Our class of interns regularly had speakers from the executive team come to give their career lessons and advice.
The only one I remember came from an executive who told us that we should only ever be 90% competent at our jobs. Max. He told us we wanted to always be 70-85% competent, and if we ever hit 95%+ then that meant it was time to go look for a new role.
The audience was a group of college students that were constantly freaking out about grades, extra-curricular activities, and how to set up the perfect resume to get a full-time job after graduation. The population was heavily skewed toward Type A.
It was absurd for this group of overachievers to hear from a seasoned professional that they shouldn’t be that good at their jobs? To not be perfect?
His point was that you don’t want your learning curve to get too flat. You want to be in positions where you’re slightly out of your skis to maximize your growth.
In hindsight, the executive was right. The college kids couldn’t quite contextualize the value of not always getting an A. Real growth only happens at the edge of your abilities. Being on the edge of your abilities sometimes means failing even if it’s the best you can do. Then learning from that and adjusting to rise to the challenge.
It was the same thing I’d experienced in the MBA class. The sweet spot for growth lies just past your comfort zone. That 70-85% range was the executive’s guidepost for being able to positively contribute while leaving room for growth.
The lesson was meant to impart that you want to find yourself in positions where you’re qualified enough, but not overly qualified. Challenged enough, but not overly challenged.
Like Goldilocks, there needs to be the right amount of difficulty.
If everything is too easy, you get comfortable, stagnant, and bored. You accidentally let time go by without any progress in your abilities.
The opposite is true too: being too far over your head leads to burnout, anxiety, and lets down everyone else if you can’t get the job done.
Nat Eliason writes about this as if you’re choosing a poker table to play at:
“You always need to be a little outside your comfort zone if you want to keep learning and improving.
It’s why the “you always want to be the dumbest person in the room” advice is mostly good, but only mostly. It’s great to be the dumbest person in the room so long as you can keep up. Otherwise, you’ll look silly.”
You want to jump into the deep end of the pool, but only if you can tread water.
Ideally you can play games that get harder as you get better. The increasing difficulty naturally keeps you in the 70-85% range even as your skills improve. That constant turnover of challenges prevents complacency from setting in. It forces you to keep learning before you ever get too comfortable.
Startups are the perfect example of the intersection of competence and chaos that foster this kind of growth. Problems are rapidly solved but new challenges appear just as quickly. It’s not possible to stagnate because the changing environment continues to change.
The small teams at startups mean everyone wears lots of hats. Between the Arrived pre-Seed and Series B, I’ve spent time in BizOps, Marketing, Finance, Real Estate Investments, Investor Relations and more1 before finally settling into a Product role.
Each shift knocked me back down to at least the 70% level. Low enough to keep learning fast, but high enough to still make a real impact right away. Rapidly repeating that cycle creates a time warp: every 1-year within a startup is worth at least 2-years of experience at a larger firm.
Parenting has been the same2. Like startups, the pace of new challenges never lets you hit 95%+ competence. Just when we feel like we’ve figured something out, the baby goes through a developmental change and it’s back to the drawing board.
In the parenting world that means handling changing sleep patterns, eating habits, and constantly questioning if a new skin rash is normal.
We’ve had older parents tell us that “it doesn’t get easier, it just gets different”. That perfectly encapsulates what it’s like to live on the edge of your abilities.
One of my biggest fears is blinking and realizing that 10 years have passed without personal or professional growth.
Aging is inevitable. Growth is optional. The only way forward is to deliberately resist what’s easy and choose to do hard things, even if you don’t feel fully ready.
Over time, I’ve learned to recognize what it feels like when my competence in a particular area gets too high. When I get a little too comfortable. When it’s too easy.
When I start to feel like I’m coasting, it’s a signal I’ve stopped growing. That’s when it’s time to take on the next challenge and do something I’m not quite ready for.
I’ve learned to shake it up when something feels too automatic. Stretching into the next arena to push me beyond my comfort zone. Each time I’ve forced myself back down to 70% by jumping into the deep end of a different pool, I’ve come out stronger and more capable on the other side.
It’s been true in parenting, work, and in a literal classroom.
There was also a time when I was working in Legal to put together our SEC filings. Glad those days are over!
We’re through 6-months. Check back in with me in a few years and see this holds true.
Excellent piece!