When our kids started at their new school when we moved to Rome, they were stunned. They didn’t imagine things could work this differently. They never complained about the old way, because they couldn’t picture another. But once their eyes were opened, they couldn’t imagine anything less than that. You can’t miss what you’ve never seen.

A similar phenomenon might be taking place in your R&D organization. If you’ve only ever seen engineering run one way, you don’t know what you don’t know. An org that only ever talks to itself mistakes its habits for laws of physics. You can’t read the label from inside the jar.

Realizing What’s Possible

Dramatic growth requires a destination you can picture. If your team’s limited experience and your own are the entire reference set, it becomes your ceiling. Think about the four-minute mile. Nobody crossed it for so long, and no one thought it was possible. Then it was broken, and it became routine within a couple of years. We thought our legs were the limiting factor. It turned out to be our mindset.

Often working with clients, we see again and again that the divergence is the finding. The place where you operate differently from everyone else is exactly where the lesson is, either a gap you couldn’t see, or an edge you never noticed you had. You need some sunlight, some vitamin D. Otherwise, how will you know whether you’re doing good?

The Protocol

First, you should start by assessing yourself. It’s common for executives to have spent a significant portion of their career in a single company, especially if you’re a founder. If you’ve spent the better part of a decade in your current company, your POV is narrow unless you’ve deliberately worked at getting more exposure. Be honest before you move on to assess anyone else.

When it comes to your team’s frame, evaluate how much their backgrounds are mixed. Watch out for the tell of a skeleton crew all from one exited startup, or from the same university. That buys you loyalty and short-term speed, but at the cost of contrarianism. You get people trying to redo the one move that worked out once in the past. It might be the best move now as well, but what are the odds of that?

Manufacture outside exposure. Form a mastermind group, join communities, attend conferences and meetups. Even just find some good arguments on social media. That’s less about the content itself than about hearing peers describe similar problems and scenarios and realizing how they view and approach them. What do they do differently that surprises you? That’s one of those divergences we talked about.

Then, lastly, inject an external frame on purpose. If you sense that your team is limited in this aspect, you can change it. That means making your next hires more strategic and looking to make the team more diverse, or getting an expert who’s worked with 100+ engineering teams that can help you realize where you stand. That’s the whole idea behind the R&D Leverage Audit: an outside reading of where your budget stopped matching your output. Reach out if you want to grab the remaining slots.

Just like my kids who couldn’t imagine what they were missing and now “get it,” you and your team can reach your next dramatic upgrade once you learn where you ought to be aiming.