Page 192 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Are Willing to Make Mistakes • 173

If you stumble a multiple of times, it results in more challenging
dialogue.
ƒ

The same mistake twice is a different conversation.
I’m not promoting mistakes; the fewer there are in life, the better it is
for all of us. I am promoting action—taking the lead and making decisions
despite being afraid of what might go wrong. Nothing gets done at all if
you wait to do it so well that no one can find any fault with it. Being faint-
hearted will inhibit you from starting your long line of successes if you let
it. As a leader, you have to rationalize away all the red flags and go for it.
Fearing failure, that is, risk aversion, is much more of a career killer
than making mistakes.

Have humility. Swallow your pride. Take your licks. Get knocked
down. And pick yourself up and start all over again. Don’t throw in
the towel when the work slaps you up aside the head.

ƒ

If you don’t make a mistake, you start getting a trust-fund-baby men-
tality. If you don’t work and worry your way through it, you don’t
appreciate the good or the bad.
Speed bumps are inevitable. You can doubt yourself every single
day. We all do. When you’re in a painful situation and it’s really tough,
let your look of fear come out as a look of confidence.

Lose the fear . . . lose the groupthink . . . lose the yes-people . . . lose
the chain of command . . . lose the consultants . . . lose the focus
groups . . . lose the safety nets . . . lose consensus . . . lose the happy
medium . . . lose the compromises . . . lose Plan B.... Keep the drive.

—From a BMW automobile advertisement