Leadership Mistakes or Smart Strategic Shifts?
Note: If you already read the incomplete version of this post that my misbehaving laptop burped out, you might want to skip to section title To Be a Right Leader Make Leadership Mistakes.
Many years ago, I consulted to a leadership team that was making a BIG shift in the company’s business strategy. At first blush it seems the team was in the throes of some BIG leadership mistakes. They were deciding to bring an end to the corporation’s role as market leader in a particular technology sector. Instead, they were going to start over with a new technology offer in a vastly different market. Why? They saw the future.
The company had achieved success by being a technology leader, but the competition caught on, as they always do. Repeat – the competition caught on as they always do.
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This will happen to your business as well. It’s a reliably repeatable phenomenon. In fact, it should be included in your strategy. Other companies will copy and paste. So plan for this at the outset. In fact, plan for it before you set out.
Back to the Company and the Strategy Shift
Without a change to their technology offering, the client company would soon have to compete in a commodities market, just to survive. But they were too wise to do so. They defined their core expertise as being technology leaders and did not tie their success to a particular technology. Brilliant. They knew they were not suited to play in the commodities space. Brava!
But that is the background context and not the main point of this post, which is:
Be careful about being right too often, particularly if you’re a leader. There is a price to be paid, particularly if you’re a leader. (Steve Jobs is a rare exception, a visionary genius. Most of us are not. So best not to go there. And also because you’ll get a very loooong reply. And also because The Steve made some pretty big leadership mistakes.)
To Be a Right Leader – Make Leadership Mistakes
Among the group of leaders was one with air tight logic. We’ll call him Mark. Mark loved a good debate. And debate he would. He also laid the frame for the debate, which made him a sure winner, unless the opposing party understood how to do the re-frame move. Most didn’t. In the end, Mark won most arguments, proving himself the smarter leader, and one who rarely didn’t know what to do. He also rarely made leadership mistakes.
But was he really smarter? Did he really make fewer leadership mistakes?
After winning the debate, Mark’s ideas were usually implemented, possibly with some modifications by other parties. But most people identified Mark as the winning solutions’ author. They also said he was very very smart, and strategic. The latter being a highly valued quality in leadership circles these days.
At the same time, few people wanted Mark on their team, or as a colleague, or as a manager, or as a customer liaison. Most people like to be right, smart, or acknowledged for their contributions at least some of time. This was unlikely to happen when Mark was in the game. So smart as he was, his playing field kept getting smaller and smaller. Smart as he was, he didn’t know why this was happening. How could it be happening. After all, he was often the smartest guy in the room, except when it came to understanding that smart is a thing others want to be as well. The really smart leader makes room for that…by making leadership mistakes, or not knowing all the answers all the time, so others can be smarter too. In truth they are smarter, they’ve just been quiet to make room for someone’s need to be right…too often.