The Icarus Impact: Finding the Balance

You know the story of Icarus? The myth?

Stop right now and think of the lesson, or the point of the story.

*** Taps fingers on table, waits patiently ***

Chances are, you probably thought of something along the lines of “don’t fly too close to the sun,” which, of course, comes from the fact that Icarus, after the warning from his father, did indeed fly too close to the sun, which caused his wax wings to melt, and he plunged to his death.

Here’s the thing that you may not have known, though -- in the myth, Icarus’s father gives him a double admonition before he takes off. Dad warns Icarus against flying too close to the sun, to be sure, but he also warns him against flying too low, lest the humidity bog down the wings and send him plunging to the ocean.

Wikipedia summarizes it basically perfectly:

“Icarus' father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings nor the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted he tumbled out of the sky and fell into the sea where he drowned, sparking the idiom "don't fly too close to the sun".”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that, in my experience, very few people are aware of this absolutely critical distinction in understanding the myth. (I actually had a full on conversation with a therapist of mine about this one time and he was stunned -- stunned -- to hear this. He was like, “I’ve been talking about that story for years.”) The point of the story is not about the danger of flying too close to the sun; the point of this story is about finding balance. 

Here’s why I’m rambling about Icarus on this fine spring morning: As we lead through tumultuous times -- especially Coronavirus quarantine hell-on-Earth -- finding that balance between complacency and hubris is absolutely critical. And this is one of the biggest challenges for leadership teams, anywhere.

This week, we met with a client company that is struggling with finding the balance on a leadership level -- some folks felt like their ambition outweighed the resources available; others felt like as a leadership team they were all over the place and were getting away from their priorities; and still others felt like they weren’t doing enough. Finding the balance, then, becomes a critical challenge for this organization, and there’s nobody who will do it but the leadership team -- in fact, the leadership team has their leadership roles for the very point that they are well-equipped to make these decisions on balance and structure.

Here’s three things to consider when you find that balance:

• You gotta take stock of your resources available.

  • If you don’t have the resources to achieve your ambition -- whether it’s time, energy, staff, talent, technology, or anything else, you are setting yourself up for failure. So any plan must start with a very honest and public (at least internally) accounting of resources available.

• Prioritization is more important than ever

  • You absolutely cannot find balance without prioritization. It is imperative that any deviation from the plan be logged and prioritized and explained, so the rest of your team can buy in. There is, especially now, a huge willingness on the part of employees and teams to go along with the leadership’s vision, but they need to understand the priorities to be a part of it. 

• Nobody became famous for falling into the water

  • If you’re gonna choose to go down by flying too close to the sun (hubris / ambition) or falling into the water (caution / complacency) almost everyone would choose to fly toward the sun. That’s why you became a leader in the first place, because of your desire to make change and seek a more exciting, more optimistic, more ambitious future. So if and when you gotta pick, you want to err on the side of ambition, you really do. It’s okay to be responsible about it, sure, but never forget that you want to seek opportunity wherever it can be found.

Icarus died, fine. But in so doing, he taught us an important lesson. Finding this balance as a leadership team is always important, but the corona quarantine is giving us all a chance to hone these skills and to develop these muscles that will serve us, and our organizations, quite well in the future. Companies that are able to do this will succeed, and will do so in an impactful, exciting way.