Brexit advice: When you burn your bridges, don't run out of runway and burn yourself

By George ILIEV
Brexit Metaphor No 61

Successful entrepreneurs apply a strategy called "burn your bridges": ensure that there is no turning back. This means you should stop doing anything else and should focus exclusively on your startup. 

There are two underlying reasons for this strategy: time and commitment. 
1) Time: burning your bridges, e.g. by quitting your day job, allows you to focus and allocate the time to work through all the iterations necessary to bring the startup to success. 
2) Commitment: if you don't burn your bridges, when the going gets tough you may be tempted to go back to your day job and abandon the startup unreasonably early.

Britain's enthusiasm to start new free trade agreements with faraway non-EU countries is commendable. Asia is the place where, on current trends, most of the growth will take place in the 21st century. So a strategy that focuses on Asia can be seen as Britain's "burn your bridges" approach: create a sense of urgency and look at the future, never looking back at the past.

However, entrepreneurs also have to take into consideration another factor called "runway", i.e. how long you can finance your startup's survival until it starts generating revenue or until you can raise more capital by selling equity. New projects usually require at least 6-12 months of runway.

Some Brexiteers are keen to deploy Hard Brexit and "burn Britain's bridges" with Europe. The problem is Britain's runway is severely limited: the country will run out of runway almost immediately if it crashes out of the EU without an agreement. So the UK may face a situation where it has burnt its bridges but in the process has set its own castle on fire.

Could Britain develop a strategic focus on Asia without burning its bridges with Europe? Couldn't "cakeism" (have your cake and eat it) be applied to trade with both Europe and Asia simultaneously? And if the UK had to choose, should it choose the bird in the sky rather than the bird in the hand?

Is there a different conclusion to this episode of the Brexit drama? Can anyone think of a justification for burning your bridges if you will run out of runway straight away and will burn yourself in the process.

So here is a final word of warning: when you burn your bridges, be careful not to burn your breeches, lest you end up a sans-culottes.

Tower Bridge, London (Source: Wikipedia)

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Notes:
1. Timeline: This article is part of a daily #BrexitMetaphors series, with 100 more Brexit Metaphors to follow until Brexit day, March 29, 2019.
2. Disclosure: The author has a master's degree in European Integration.
3. Invitation: If you'd like to contribute to the debate, you are welcome to leave a comment below.