Are you leading with an entire constellation when your mission is best served to lead with just a star?

Whether it’s leading your team to a new promise-land, or getting that key first investor lined up, or engaging a new client into partnership, there’s often a hiccup when many of our very brightest minds attempt this.

I have a client who specializes in world-class innovation. His mind is a marvel — it summons a tsunami in an ocean when mine would only summon a ripple in a puddle.

His prodigy-level gift is to look at existing systems, from platforms to product matrices to whole industries, and see entirely new possibilities, permutations, offerings, and beyond. It’s like he walks into a copper mine to find new copper veins and then comes out with a map to a multitude of gold and platinum veins. Where I might look up into the night sky and just see a random array of stars, this person becomes like one of Kerouac’s crew, “…roman candles exploding like spiders..”, effusively pointing out constellation after constellation after constellation. As a result, now I can see them, and my familiar night sky is even more spectacular.

Yet, what my client has been experiencing (and what many other brilliant clients I’ve worked with experienced), when the giant vision becomes apparent to them, is a surprising challenge in bringing the other party on board.

They excitedly, and deservedly so, describe to their potential partner the brilliant new constellation that’s become visible. There’s the “Whoa — that’s amazing…” moment. But frequently nothing follows.

What has been missed is an all-important step.

In chemistry there is what is called the “rate-determining step”. This is the step upon which the speed of the entire reaction is contingent on. It doesn’t matter how much new material/solution is poured into the system, the process will only unfold at the speed of one reaction that may then enable a more scaled reaction. Like a tunnel between two big bodies of water. It can rain big time and fill the bodies, but the tunnel can still only handle what its aperture can handle.

The consciousness of the other party is that rate-determining step.

It frequently starts with its own initial problem to solve. At that point it is the hammer looking for a nail. Whereas the big genius mind, that has just uncovered an entire Ace Hardware store, can have a challenge going back to the scale of the nail:

“Yes, of course — a nail. Absolutely can do a nail. But who cares anymore about a nail — COME ON IN THE HARDWARE STORE!”

Nada.

Not until they ask the other party what are they really looking to solve right now? What is keeping them up at night? What is the task at hand for them? And really listen for the “nail”. And then begin the process of bringing in the entire Ace Hardware store by starting with the one amazing nail, which leads to an incredible assortment of nails, which leads to an incredible store of everything.

Your team may be enthralled with the giant vision, but want to know how it might impact their upcoming performance reviews. The big key investor is blown away by the scaled product set and exponential expansion, but wants to start with solving for their particular ROI and your current burn rate. The pivotal new client totally gets the massive organic growth to be generated by AI-enabled UGC in Q4, but needs to know how it will move inventory for one problem SKU in Q2.

It’s important to understand this is not a default setting , or compromise— the ego likes to play that card — “This is bullshit, man. They don’t appreciate our genius. Let’s take the hardware store somewhere else. By the way, this is another example of you being an imposter — can’t let you forget that one.”

But the ego is of course the one full of shit, the imposter. This smarter approach is being responsive and being strategic to both what is being asked for and one’s own mission. Because the big insight is this: they are actually one and the same.

The one star is both a single star AND part of an epic constellation. If soneone is looking for a belt, how smart to show them a star in a belt that belongs to the epic sky-spanning constellation of Orion? If how you bring the epic constellation into someone else’s consciousness is to start with one key star that they’re looking for, you are not being stupid and small (ego-play), you are being wise and giant.

You are being the kind of creator this world really needs right now.

The kind that believes in the end-impact of its full creation so much that they are willing and enthusiastic to first meet the crucial other where they are, knowing that this is the first rock that leads to the other rocks that get us across the river to the big stuff.

There is nothing more innovative in the world than to recognize that scaled change always begins with a rate-determining step, a single star in the sky, and listen intently to humanity as it describes it precisely to us.

This is how we bring big genius, like my roman candle client, into a world that really needs its sky illuminated right now through their brilliance “…exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” (had to finish that Kerouac)

Yes, the bigger insight is that they themselves are an all-important star in the constellation.

The real star every epic future starts with.