When you get a chance to look at all of them in your rear view mirror, as I recently did as a result of my company being sold, it's very illuminating to put all these errors in some kind of overall perspective, to see if there are any revealing common themes and traits that jump out.
In my case, there was one thing that kept popping up, over and over again.
It was what I call "the Ignorance Strategy".
That is, something went wrong because I willfully ignored it. I knew it was there, or somebody told me it was there, but for whatever reason, I didn't do anything about it.
Because I didn't believe what I saw or heard.
Or I was paralyzed with fear.
Or I was resigned that "there was nothing I could do"
Or thought that it "was somebody else's problem"
Or, because I ignored it, it would "just go away"
Or a a mixture of all of the above
Here's the thing about the Ignorance Strategy. It's very easy to implement. Doing nothing doesn't take much effort at all.
But let me tell you one thing, from my long personal (and sometimes painful) experience -
It Doesn't Work.
Let's look at a couple of examples (culled from my own history):
- You have a field manager that you personally hired and invested a lot of time with. After several months on the job, it's quite clear that this hire isn't going to work out, judging by the feedback you are getting from peers and people that work for this person. Trouble is, you get the feedback, and because of your bias and your fear of owning up to a mistake, you ignore it. Then things get progressively worse, and the next thing you know the business has been adversely affected by your Ignorance Strategy.
- You become aware of some strife among your staff and their counterparts in another department. Your team is becoming increasingly distracted and preoccupied with these tussles, and it is hurting productivity. The problem is, you and the head of that other department have been at odds with one another for years, so you'd rather not have to deal with it. And besides, those folks are all adults, so they should be able to work it all out by themselves, right (i.e. "it's not my problem")?. So you go with the Ignorance Strategy, and settle for performance that certainly could have been better if you had engaged.
The real peril of the Ignorance Strategy is that it can be a very subconscious thing – it's very hard to see this dangerous pattern when it's happening, because after all, as leaders we all try to think of ourselves as people of action, and open, and aware, and willing to engage.
But we must learn, as I did, to "see" the instances where we can fall back into this pattern, connect them immediately with past experience (i.e. it doesn't work), and then proceed on the better path of proactive engagement, no matter how daunting or challenging that path may be.
Because while I can tell you that stepping up doesn't necessary guarantee mistake-free leadership, I can tell you that your batting average will be considerably higher. Ignorance is certainly not bliss for the successful leader.
