The Wrong Turn People Take on the Second Curve (From My Consulting Work)

Both individuals and companies often need a second curve. A second curve usually stands for hope, for potential, for a new possibility. In practice it rarely goes well.

Companies rarely open a second curve the way the principle says to

In traditional management, the method that actually works in practice is a walled-off space and a walled-off team, so the new thing doesn’t get eaten by the existing first-curve business — Amazon building the Kindle, for example. Everyone is taken up by the first curve. It takes the boss pushing hard in person, naming a strong person, giving them their own authority and their own targets. Only then does the second curve have a chance to move. But very few teams actually do this, because very few bosses have the nerve to pull a genuinely strong person off the main business and put them on something entirely new. It happens, but not often. What usually happens instead: the team keeps everything it already has, and a second curve gets added on top.

When it won’t move, the boss thinks his people aren’t up to it and the people think the two jobs can’t both be done. That tension sits in the team.

For an individual it usually means robbing Peter to pay Paul

An individual is taken up too — by the day job, by being worn out after work, by a pile of responsibilities at home.

You can still force a second curve open at that point, but you do it by dismantling something in your existing life: most often sleep, exercise, time with family. It doesn’t hold. The baseline breaks, you go back to putting out fires, and the second curve runs in fits and starts.

That’s when it feels like the first curve has you trapped.

What actually works in practice

The only way is to optimize a new piece of space out of the system you already have — to make the system lighter — and then do the second curve.

So the first move isn’t to start building. It’s to make the first curve lighter. Very few people are willing to do this, because taking new ground is exciting and pruning is deeply unsexy. People would rather believe that motivation will lift their efficiency, and that the second curve will somehow get done that way.

Systems grow by getting smaller first

When the baseline is full, you have no energy to carry anything new, even when you have the hours. So the first step is to reduce the entropy of your baseline. At this stage your system isn’t expanding — it looks like it’s shrinking. Only once it has shrunk does the force pressing down on the system ease off, and new drive shows up to support building the new system.

How to check yourself

If you’ve worked out what your second curve is, and instead of jumping straight in you turn back and start clearing the first curve — like carrying things out of a room that is already packed, before you bring anything in — your odds this time are much better.

Full framework: https://ericlogic.com/go/F013-seo