The Catch-22s of Business

May 12, 2018

**This post was originally published by Inc., and is available here.**

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

So many company founders wind up circling back to Joseph Heller's brainchild, Catch-22.That's all starting a company is, really. Our protagonist Yossarian's fight, and his buddy Orr's, was one of survival during WWII. Most companies have loftier goals, certainly, than merely staying alive (if that's a goal at all in the long term). But the journey is riddled with Catch-22s, which tend to require more than disregarding safety to move past.

The rest of the post is available here.