Back to School on the Impossible

I subscribe to Hubspot’s daily Hustle newsletter. If you are not familiar with it, it’s a simple daily news format and a nice way to digest what is happening in the world outside of the mainstream media.  One recent story caught my eye:

1. Hoboken, New Jersey: A city of nearly 60,000 people, Hoboken hasn’t had a single traffic fatality (driver, occupant, bicyclist, or pedestrian) since January 2017. The change came after removing parking spaces near intersections, reducing speed limits, and adding staggered traffic lights, all as part of an initiative called Vision Zero.
2. Netherlands: The Netherlands has dramatically improved road safety over decades. In 1972, there were 3,267 traffic fatalities. Thanks to careful policies and road designs, that number dropped by 83% to around 570 deaths in 2013–14.

Believe it or not, this kind of remarkable result is not just local to Finland, Netherlands or the USA. According to DEKRA’s global data 1,273 cities across 26 countries have achieved zero traffic fatalities in at least one year, and hundreds of them did so more than once.  Back in 2022, at least 180 cities worldwide had a year with zero road deaths, and over 500 cities (each with more than 50,000 inhabitants) achieved this multiple times.

Making the impossible possible

What does this have to do with your business finances? Well, everything actually.  When it comes to running your business, your finances and showing leadership, first instincts may be to dismiss certain goals as ‘impossible.’  However, just like Helsinki and others, the shift comes not from one single, game winning move, but from a combination of small, disciplined, and often unglamorous changes;

• Tighter budgetary control that slows down reckless spending
• Redesigned processes that rethink how money flows through your business, not just how much of it you have
• Better enforcement via reporting, accountability, and the courage to act fast on red flags
• Gradual cultural shift that gets your whole team aligned with financial goals

Defining Impossible

Quite often the challenge isn’t even in making the impossible possible, but in actually defining what that impossible target is.  This could be subconsciously thinking that your business has a plateau of revenues it can reach, a gross margin from which it cannot exceed without serious side effects on staff burnout and client quality etc.  

What if these urban planners had simply settled for a situation that every city will always have a certain level of traffic related deaths. What if they didn’t approach from the viewpoint that even 1 death is too many.  

What does that teach us? That impossible is just a mindset waiting for structure, discipline, and a vision.

Back to School approach

This week will be back to school for anyone with children or grandchildren.  My father is a retired primary school teacher and principal and still, even close to 80 years and with his youngest son just turned 40, talks about going back to school.  I’ve learned this isn’t a habit associated with when he worked in one, but more a wider mindset.  The mindset is, never stop being a student, never stop adjusting and never stop learning.

Here’s how you can adapt that mindset to define and achieve your impossible.

1. Revisit your cost base to assess any leaks that can create headroom for opportunity
2. Reset with metrics that reflect where your business is today not where it was five years ago
3. Get external perspective via a a mentor, CFO advisor, or peer accountability partner who can see your blind spots
4. Focus your big bets by choosing one or two transformative goals (new product line, pricing redesign, growth partnership) and line your resources behind them.
5. Cash flow discipline to keep your cash reserves strong during the long grind.

Mark O’Meara

One more example to close and capture this mindset.  For nearly two decades, Mark O’Meara was the definition of a steady golfer: he was good enough to win some tour events, very respected by peers, but ultimately never tipped to step up and be one of golf’s all-time greats. The 4 Majors were always out of reach.  Then came 1998. At 41 years old, O’Meara stunned the world by winning, not one, but two majors in the same year, The Masters and The Open Championship. He never won another one, his first and only majors a few months apart, and after twenty years of grinding.  This was the essence of a late peak, a change in approach, and a demonstration that he could achieve a season above which nobody thought possible, especially at his age. 

Your peak can arrive after years of persistence, discipline, and learning and it can generate results way beyond what you may believe is achievable. Define your impossible target and put the work in now to make it happen.  Use back-to-school season as your inspiration, treat your business like a student again: curious, disciplined, and open to surprise.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela