Mazes and labyrinths: Four ways to navigate the maze of growing businesses

My soon-to-be 9-year-old son loves a good maze.

When we do them together, we’d each start at a different point and race to the centre, giving out high-fives as prizes to the winner.

It struck me how comfortable he is with the unknown. He sees it as a game, even if he might be “lost.”

But at some stage we grow up, lose our comfort with the unknown and grow our necessity for control.

It’s interesting to contrast his love for mazes with our approach to growing businesses.

How often do we find ourselves in a seemingly never-ending maze of dead ends and wrong turns?

What do we do when we feel “lost”?

Mazes and labyrinths

As much as he enjoys mazes, he’s not a fan of labyrinths. There’s no adventure to a labyrinth, there’s no unknown. There’s a single way in and a single path to the end.

The correct term for it is unicursal. It implies that it doesn’t matter which path you take, you’ll get to the end.

In different words: In a labyrinth, every path you take will lead to the same result.

It’s a peaceful pilgrimage designed to take you on a mindfulness journey.

Now, what does a growing business look like? A peaceful pilgrimage of mindfulness, or an adventure of puzzles, occasional disappointments and many celebrations?

Dead ends suck

Hopefully, most of you reading this would be up for the latter option – let’s choose the adventure!

However, dead ends suck.

No one is excited if marketing campaigns don’t pay off.

Or if new hires don’t fit.

Or if clients don’t buy and products don’t sell.

Mazes, like growing businesses, are multicursal. They have a set of different starting points, and many routes leading from the start to the centre.

In growing businesses, like mazes, every path is unique. 

Wrong turns and dead ends are real. Taking the wrong turn feels like wasted energy. And then blaming commences. It leads to internal conflict as someone probably “made a mistake” that led to a dead end. And conflict restricts progress.

How do we avoid the conflicts of dead ends and enjoy the adventure for what it is?

Navigating the maze

If you feel like you’re in a maze of growth and hitting constant dead ends, try this.

1.      Strategise

• Get a map. But know that the map is not the territory. The map is valuable though; even though it’s not a true reflection of reality, it provides a good starting point.
• What to do: Follow an adaptive strategy that changes over time as your environment changes.

2.      Engage

• Dead ends aren’t wasted effort – there’s a lot of learnings that can be gained around every corner. It does, however, require you to stop for a moment, engage and reflect before you move on.
• What to do: Quarterly OKR cycles work incredibly well to set a rhythm of reflection and learning.

3.      Orientate

• Take stock of where you are currently, before you determine where you need to move to next. Use landmarks to orientate yourself, elevate out of the detail, or reach out and ask for help.
• What to do: Scorecards and KPIs work well here. Or appoint a board to provide external perspective.

4.      Move

• It sounds trivial, but sometimes you just need to keep moving. There’s a tip to navigating mazes: stick out your left hand, touch the wall and keep going, without letting go of the wall. Eventually, you’ll get there.
• What to do: Momentum builds momentum. Often, just taking the next right step will create the momentum you need.

Labyrinths were designed to be a spiritual journey.

But rest assured, even though business is no labyrinth, it’s as much of a spiritual journey as any labyrinths will ever be.

Happy exploring,

Paul