The Biggest Problem in Whitewater

The founder: “Help, I’m in Whitewater!”

Me: “OK, what we’re going to do is…”

The founder: “Hold that thought, I’m in Whitewater.”

I help founders get out of Whitewater all day, every day. And I’ve discovered that the biggest challenge to getting out of Whitewater is…

Drumroll, please…

Still, drumming? Good.

The biggest challenge in Whitewater is: Whitewater.

I know. Impressive logic, isn’t it 🙂 It’s like the dictionary definition that uses a word in its own definition.

But it is so very real.

And it is by far the number one reason founders get stuck in Whitewater.

If you know, you know

If you’re there, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You’re just getting bounced around from rapid to rapid, and you can’t think straight. You’re exhausted, you’re frustrated, and the last thing you feel like you can do is step out of working in the organization so you can work on it. 

Your profitability (or, more likely, the lack of profitability) is scary. You have to jump in and save the day because your leaders aren’t keeping up, either. You can’t find good people to help out, and even if you could, you don’t have any time to even think about training them.

The problem is there is no one problem. There are 1,000 of them. How do you google “I have a thousand problems and” I’ll stop there 🙂

You can’t google it. Don’t get me wrong. I google all the time. But this isn’t one of those things. Maybe one day ChatGPTwill save the day. But I doubt that too.

Why? Because we don’t even know what questions to ask. And we don’t have time to solve even the questions we do ask.

The game is stacked against you

It’s like playing one of those whack-a-mole arcade games. 

The mole pops up.

You smash it with all your might. It’s a little uneventful. But the mole retreats and victory is won.

But then two more pop up. 

You don’t quite have the time to really wind up for both, so you switch to a speed approach. Bop! Bop! Nailed it!

And four more pop up.

Now, all bets are off. You just start swinging.

Then eight pop up.

Now you’re sweating. It’s chaos. There are moles everywhere. 

And you’re standing there thinking, “I see where this is going. Why even try?”

Why even try?

If you’ve been in Whitewater long enough, you probably catch yourself thinking, “Why even try?” and probably with your choice of expletives thrown in for good measure.

• Why try hiring an executive when the last two made things even worse?
• Why open another location when you’ll probably have to shut down the last one you opened?
• Why try setting bigger sales targets when you can’t even hit your current targets?
• Why try driving for greater profitability when everything you’ve tried for the last three years has fallen short?

Or more importantly…

• Why work even harder at a new set of skills that don’t come naturally to you, take time away from your real work, and don’t have a direct line to more revenue or more profit?

Hint, hint. This last one is actually the only one that works and will drive ALL the others faster than you thought possible. More on that later.

So why should you try? 

First, you don’t have to.

You can choose to return to simpler times; if that’s right for you, it’s the easiest and fastest way out. (More on that in this article)

Second, you have to.

If you don’t choose to return to Fun. Then, you have to drive forward to Predictable Success. Like the great Green Day song, “You don’t have to go home. But you can’t stay here.” You can’t stay in Whitewater, and why would you want to? All that stress. All that turnover. All those problems. You don’t need any of it. You can push past all of it.

Third, you get to.

This is the real reason why. You get to. If you’ve had enough success to hit Whitewater. You’ve created an organization that can achieve Predictable Success. The vast majority of (up to 98%) never make it this far. You get to scale. You get to see your grand vision come to fruition. You get to solve big problems on a regional, national, or even global scale. You get to change your industry. You get to create a ton of jobs and careers. You get to build an amazing culture. 

And let’s be honest. You get to make a lot more money both while you own your business AND after you sell it (If it’s a nonprofit, you get to have way more resources than you’ve ever had before, so you can create way more impact than you ever have before.)

And to do all of that (or whatever parts YOU want to do), you need a way to beat the game.

You need a way to beat the game

You need a way to beat the game. And there is a way. I’ll tell you about it soon. But before I can tell you what it is, I have to show you what it isn’t. There are three very common but equally wrong ways to solve the Whitewater problem and achieve Predictable Success. I’ll share each one and why it won’t work in the following article.

If you enjoyed this article, here are a few more you may find helpful.

• Part 2 and Part 3 in this series
• The Founder’s Choice
• Organizational Lifecycle Stage 3: Whitewater