A founder opens a business. Sales pick up fast. Feeling confident, he hires ahead of demand, takes a bigger office and signs longer contracts. Then a few customers pay late and the cash runs dry. He shuts down.
Four years later he starts again in a completely different industry. He is older and more careful. He has promised himself it will not happen again.
Eighteen months in, sales pick up. He hires ahead of demand. He takes a bigger office.
Different business. Same crack in the same place.
When a venture fails, the usual suspects are outside us. The market turned. A partner let us down. Customers paid late. Often that is true. Yet when the same kind of trouble follows someone across industries, cities and partners, one thing has stayed constant through all of it.
For one founder it is spending freely the moment cash feels comfortable. For another it is avoiding hard conversations until a relationship cannot be repaired. For a third it is hiring capable people and never letting them decide anything.
The strange part is that most of them know this about themselves. So why does knowing not help?
Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call it immunity to change. We hold a genuine goal alongside a hidden commitment that quietly works against it. The founder truly wants discipline. He is also committed to feeling successful. Spending is how success feels to him. As long as that second commitment stays hidden, it wins.
Their method is easy to describe. Write down the goal. List what you actually do that works against it. Then ask what you would worry about if you stopped. The worry usually points to the hidden commitment.
A mistake you keep repeating is not bad luck. It is a promise you are still keeping to yourself.
Seeing the mistake is only half the work. The other half is finding what it protects.
Think about the last two or three times things went badly in your business. Then finish this sentence honestly: “Things usually start going wrong when I…”
If the answer repeats, your next venture needs more than a better plan. It needs you to catch that moment early and ask what you are really protecting.
DeliberX Ref: DXB-9.2 · Immunity to change (Kegan & Lahey) · Find the hidden commitment behind a repeated mistake
A crack that opens in the same place twice is a signature, not a coincidence.
The blind spot you carry from one venture to the next is exactly what the Decision Check is designed to surface.
→ Take the 2-minute Decision Check
