Making Anxiety Pay Off

By George Anders

Many successful leaders radiate confidence in public, only to wrestle with private anxieties when no one else is watching. Such secret jitters aren't a character flaw -- and they might even be a source of strength -- says long-time social entrepreneur Liam Black.

I've known Liam since early 2012. He's funny and irreverent as a conference speaker; he's an even more captivating provocateur over the dinner table. After speaking at several leadership conferences organized by Wavelength, a UK ideas company that Liam cofounded, I couldn't help marvel at how smoothly he and his partners keep everything organized. If you'd asked me a month ago whether Liam ever got flustered, I would have said: "No!"

Guess again. "Worry is part of the process of creation," Liam writes in an intriguing new book that combines memoir, rueful stories -- and rock-solid advice. It's "The Social Entrepreneur's A to Z," published this month in the UK and presumably headed for global distribution later on. In it, Liam pulls back the curtain on some of the tougher moments in his career.

Take the time in the 1990s when, as head of Liverpool's Furniture Resource Center, Liam spent way too much money to design a beautiful new store. Big mistake. Everything was so elegant that his working-class customers felt out of place. No one bought anything. The debacle was a costly -- but vital -- way for him to learn an essential lesson: stay close to your customers and don't try to imagine what they want from afar.

Other missteps taught him the importance of hiring carefully and taking time to stay connected with his own family. Another crucial discovery, Liam admits: If feedback is the breakfast of champions, "I needed a full English every morning."

Nonprofits are particularly prone to operating with murky definitions of success, he observes. In the short turn, such evasions make it easier to proclaim that everything is going well, while ignoring breakdowns in service quality, financial discipline or even outright mission failure. Liam's advice: don't try to fool yourself. Gather the data that will tell you what you're doing right or wrong -- and then make the necessary changes. "If your feedback loop is not making you wince," he writes, "then it is not working."

Making mistakes can be painful, Liam acknowledges, but the consequences don't have to be catastrophic. Even when your worst anxieties come true, "you learn that you do survive," he observes. "If you've been acting with integrity and authenticity, then people by and large are forgiving."