Dave KashenStartup CEO Coach / 2x founder

The Rubber Band Rule of Creative Tension #innerwork #founder #startups

8 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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This content was created by Dave Kashen. This content was uploaded by Dave Kashen. This is a YouTube video titled "The Rubber Band Rule of Creative Tension #innerwork #founder #startups" (created/posted 2025-12-08). The excerpt is a short dialog between Dave Kashen and another speaker (labeled Speaker B). Kashen uses a "rubber band" metaphor to explain the tension between current reality and desired future state, discussing goal-setting, stretch targets, deadlines, and the risks of goals being too slack (low motivation) or unrealistically large (demoralization or a "snap"). The content is aimed at founders/startups and leadership thinking about how to set motivating, believable targets.

Chapters

If you think about the tension between current reality and the desired future state as a rubber band, like, you can have the rubber band be too slack. This sometimes happens in organizations where it's like, we're at 5, we're gonna get to 6, and people are like, okay, right? And then the leaders are like, why are my people not working that hard? You know, God, they're not putting in the— you know, like, well, there's not enough tension in the system, right? Getting— or they don't believe it, or, or, um, or there's not a clear deadline. So, it's like, "We're going to get to 10 someday in the future," which doesn't create tension versus like a year from now and all of a sudden. But you can also snap the rubber band because, Jesse, if you said 12, maybe that galvanizes them if they thought their goal was 7. And maybe they just can't believe it's possible and the rubber band breaks and there's no tension anymore. Or you said, "Well, you're at 5 now. How about 100 next year?" At some point, it just becomes magical thinking.
Yeah. I think I've seen what happens too is that you start not tracking towards that goal and then everybody either— it's a joke, a laughingstock, or it's just so discouraging for everybody because they feel like they're losing every day even though the business may be double but you set the target at quadruple. Yeah.