No One Really Knows How Business Works. We Just Pretend.

We want people to think we know as it upgrades our food and shelter if people believe.

Tim Denning
The Startup
Published in
5 min readSep 23, 2022

--

Photo by Fotos on Unsplash

Business feels a lot like a handwavy cult.

There’s a whole language full of jargon that goes with it. Phrases such as innovation, strategy, market share, profit, customer journey, value-add — have become buzzwords we’re all sick of.

All the glitz and glam of business make it sound fancy. But author Mark Manson is right…

Take comfort: no one actually knows what the hell they’re doing. Everyone is just working off their current best guess — Mark Manson

We pretend we know what business is about when nobody really knows.

We act like business is a formula

I spent a good part of my career working in big, bad businesses.

We’d sit in huge strategy sessions with our pinstripe suits and overpriced iPhones sitting on the board table. There were org charts, GANT charts, butcher’s paper, and whiteboards in every meeting.

Different business leaders would have ideas for new products/services. Actually, often…

--

--

Tim Denning
The Startup

Aussie Blogger with 500M+ views — Writer for CNBC & Business Insider. Inspiring the world through Personal Development and Entrepreneurship — timdenning.com/mb