I follow Ryan Holiday, a bit of a modern-day philosopher, through his newsletters, which always have some great nuggets of wisdom. In his most recent edition, “37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I’d Known Earlier”, he, as usual, did not disappoint. In fact, one of his entries stood out strongly to me:
Very rarely have I ever let anyone go because they did not have the skills to do their job. It’s almost always their unwillingness to learn those skills or their inability to take feedback.
Sure, I have felt this and experienced it many times in my corporate life when I led teams and managed people. But what stood out to me was looking at this from the other side, at the organizational level.
We all make mistakes. That’s a given. It’s almost never the mistake itself that matters, it’s what happens next that tells you what you need to know, what you should really be paying attention to.
His entry is in regards to people he manages, but this has an important application to leadership in organizations. When an organization makes a mistake, or a bad decision, what do they do next? If it was due to a skill gap, do they enlist the help and support of the right people with the right skills to make repairs? If it was a lack of understanding, do they take steps to solicit feedback and then implement that feedback?
Mistakes are not always knowable or controllable, but our responses to them are.
My methods of eating moules frites (in France!) are a bit suspect…definitely a skill gap…