Another one is a way to handle the stress of when things boil over, and problems are popping up. This was happening to me at Google all the time and probably less so now at Upstart, but when things pile up and your coping skills are almost at their wit’s end, I have this mental model of a reset button, says Girouard.
And it’s literally just this red button in my head, and I press reset. I tell myself, I’m starting over. No problem is unsolvable. And we’re not building nuclear plants, so nobody’s going to die. I’m going to think about these problems one by one and realize that none of them are going to kill us, and each of them are solvable. A mental reset button just clears everything, and that’s one trick that I’ve strangely relied on for many, many years.
What Could Upstart Do Better
Upstart does have some flaws to consider. One is that because it has an unusual process for determining creditworthiness, those with strong credit might get denied. If you have great credit but little education and work history, Upstart may not approve your application.
Envisioning this future state isn’t a process, though. It’s not quantified. It’s like looking at a bunch of Kodachromeold-school There’s this path that we’re on, and if we’re successful on that path for two years, things would just look naturally look and feel completely different. How do our people feel? What does the company feel like? How does the world perceive us? he says. I don’t even write them down. It’s just sort of these simple images in my head that you have little glimpses of.
Here’s an example of what he means: I can imagine a place where all of a sudden our brand is really big what that would feel like and what would be different from where we are today? Or a place where we’re in six categories, not one or two. Or where we’re a global company, not an American company. And then every day, it’s just disappointing because we’re not that, so every day is trying to figure out how to get from here to there. Read More