My team knows I'm not a fan of being called “boss”, so they love to tease me with all kinds of playful variations on it.
I've always enjoyed being part of a team and seeing that team succeed. When I was younger I played tennis pretty well, but I never loved it as much as basketball — which, full disclosure, I wasn't very good at. Looking back, it was always about the team aspect for me: winning or losing together rather than winning alone.
This week, a good friend reminded me of the saying, “Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.”
That got me thinking. Without even realising it, I've always leaned into testing things quickly and learning from the inevitable failures along the way. Maybe it goes back to when I first learned to code in the 1980s, in an era of trial and error, before the Web, search engines and, of course, Stack Overflow. Back then, if you hit a snag, you either figured it out yourself or hoped a friend knew the answer. It was a constant cycle of testing, breaking and improving.
I suppose that's why I never let failure be an orphan. You'll often hear me say “blame me if it fails” in case something doesn't go to plan.
But I know this approach isn't for everyone. Even today, any kind of failure is still a bit taboo for many people.
The best analogy I've found for the leadership part of my job is that of a football coach: if we win, the players get all the credit; if we lose, I get the blame. And the only time I get credit is if we win the whole cup.
And I'm absolutely fine with that.
Here's what I've taken away from these reflections:
- Becoming an agile organisation means embracing small failures as part of our DNA. Or maybe we find a better word for failure.
- As I help train the next generation of leaders, I'm making sure they understand that letting people fail — and making sure they don't feel bad about it — is a core part of the job.
This is why “hey boss” always makes me pause. It brings to mind the old-school image of a boss dishing out orders from on high and punishing failure. A next-generation boss, at least in my book, is more about creating and protecting a space where people can perform, experiment, and, if need be, fail and try again.
First posted on LinkedIn, Fri 8 November 2024. · All Friday Thoughts