Is your idea wrong? (#221)

Hard Choices: 1 decision. 1 minute.

The decision

Do you want to work on your idea?

Or the best idea in the room?

Why this matters

Founders are paid to have conviction. The risk is confusing conviction with correctness.

Especially for hard-charging founders who are usually right.

Example: Choosing a technically elegant decarbonization pathway that customers won’t pay for.

The problem is, no one is the most insightful person all the time, regardless of their fancy title or years spent at a company.

For organizational behavior nerds, this could be a toxic cocktail of the Overconfidence Effect, Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) norms, and the First-Instinct Fallacy.

How do we empower teams to tell us our baby is ugly? In your next meeting, ask:

• The Failure Filter: “What’s the single biggest reason this fails?”

• The Early Warning: “If we’re wrong, what early signal would prove it in 30 days?”

• The Data Pivot: “What specific piece of data would change our minds today?”

• The Kill Switch: “If a competitor wanted to kill this project, how would they do it?”

So what?

Beware of chasing passion projects over real market needs in climate tech. Climate urgency does not excuse poor capital allocation.

Given the scale of the climate challenge, we don’t have the luxury of time to let ego win over impact. Despite how smart we think we are.

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If this clarified a decision you’re facing, pass it on to one CEO who’d benefit.

~ Chris

Climate tech CEO coach, Entrepreneurs for Impact