The road to success is often punctuated with potholes and occasional detour signs. This expert ... [+]
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
As many high school history students can tell you, that quote is frequently attributed to inventor Thomas Edison.
But as with a lot of famous quotes, there’s not universal agreement on what Edison actually said in commenting on his work with the electric light bulb. Another version goes like this: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I eliminated the ways that will not work, I found the way that will work.”
We may quibble about quotes, but there’s no doubt that the road to success is often punctuated with potholes and occasional detour signs.
Failing faster to succeed sooner sounds counterintuitive, almost subversive. But if you sincerely followed the “try, try again” advice from childhood, you know in your heart of hearts that it’s true.
Colin Hunter certainly does. He’s author of Be More Wrong: How Failure Makes You an Outstanding Leader.
This mentor, entrepreneur and coach is chief executive of Potential Squared International, a London-based company that inspires leaders by disrupting the way they engage and develop their people.
Colin is sure to challenge some of your paradigms as he makes a case for what’s right about being more wrong.
Rodger Dean Duncan: The surest path to success, you say, is to fail. How did you arrive at such a provocative view?
Colin Hunter: The journey to Be More Wrong was one of overcoming what I perceived as failures. My mindset from my education and growing up was that unless you were intellectually bright and able to always be right you had failed. What I came to realize through work with Design Thinking, relationships with clients and the challenge of leadership, was that life was about experimenting and consistently sailing your ship out of the harbor and stretching yourself. In all the most successful organizations and leaders comes the certainty of failure. If that failure is toward your purpose, is followed by reflection and a refined approach—then it’s a good way to learn fast.
Duncan: You define leadership as “agitating for the future.” Please elaborate on that.
Hunter: For me, the word leadership has always been reframed as “lead ship.” In other words, the lead ship in any Armada or Flotilla—the one that leads the way. In other words, providing others with a sense of direction. Whether that is to deliver exceptional service in the luxury sector or product development in the tech sector, the leaders are aiming to develop themselves and their teams to be ready and able to thrive in a deeply human way, even in chaos. This requires the leader to agitate the team’s mindset, moodset, and capability so they are always at the peak of their game and ready to face or grasp whatever the market throws at them.
Too many leaders sail their ships around the harbor, and they lack the readiness to grasp the right opportunities when they arise. Future proofing your team through agitating for the future is the leader’s role.
Duncan: As a mentor, coach, and entrepreneur, you rely on what you call the Leadership Impact Model. Give us a brief tutorial on how that model works.
Colin Hunter
Hunter: The three C’s of the Leadership Impact Model are Confidence, Convictions and Connection. They are the way leaders show up to anything they tackle in their role.
Confidence is the physicality, vocality, mindset and moodset they deploy that immediately creates confidence in the people they lead and encounter. This is what others would call the executive presence they create through dialing up and down the dimensions of gravitas and prominence.
The Conviction is the “red thread” that flows through their messaging and actions. It’s based on their purpose, their identity (whether given or chosen) and their values set. People want to see consistency, coherence and congruence in how leaders act.
The final dimension is probably the most important—Connection. This is as a New Zealand colleague of mine beautifully described the ability of the leader “to dance to the music other people bring.” It’s agility in connecting with the diversity of people they lead and encounter.
If leaders have only Confidence, without Conviction and Connection, they are seen as arrogant. If they have only Conviction, they are a cause without a rebel. If they have only Connection, they are lovely people who lack direction or followers. The three C’s work together to create leadership impact.
Duncan: What are some of the day-to-day leadership habits that seem most useful in producing sustainable results?
Hunter: I work on a process that moves from adopting new practices, to their becoming habitual if they feed the key systems of my leadership. To do that one of my key daily habits is listening to Audible leadership books or podcasts to source new ideas of practices. One of those discoveries from a book was the concept of “nesting” habits. So, now I listen to Audible (habit 1) while I do my daily workout (habit 2). This means I can crunch a book a week or multiple podcasts. The “nested habits” benefit of learning while increasing my resilience through exercise.
The third habit I’ve put in place around those nested habits is that of headspace or meditation. My superpower is the choice of taking 20 minutes at the beginning of the day to use my breath to clear my head, fall out of my own thinking and prepare for the day. I have seen measurable impact in the quality of my decisions and ideas.
Daily habits can also involve your team. An example of that we call our Daily Pulse. Based on Winston Churchill’s Prayers that he used in the war, it comprises of bringing the whole team together at 9:15 AM for 15 minutes to work through three questions: What is my highlight from yesterday? What are my key deliverables today? What am I doing tomorrow that is high priority?This habit and ritual allows the team to share, be connected and identify dependencies or possible gaps before they start their day.
Duncan: In leadership circles, much as been said about the importance of discovering one’s purpose or defining one’s “why.” What’s your view on that?
Hunter: Purpose or True North for any leader for me is an essential. Whether that is based on an identity—for example, I hold an identity of being a “Father of Daughters,” which drives a purpose of creating more equity for women in organizations and careers. Or it is based on the ding you want to create in the universe—mine is to create playgrounds that disrupt the way people are led. It should be a guiding light for how you lead, make decisions, whom you recruit and whom you invite in to increase your diversity of thought.
Defining your purpose should be hard, and for most of us will come only by experimentation with different purposes and True Norths.
It’s essential to add leading indicators to your purpose that tell you whether you are heading the right direction. I have had four iterations of my purpose from the original one of “Creating heroes of the people I work with” through to the concept of creating playgrounds. Purposefully testing your purpose to make sure it serves you and measuring the indicators of whether it is taking you in the right direction are the core ingredients.
Duncan: How do good leaders craft their identities, and what role does that play in their effectiveness?
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Hunter: We have two types of identities. Those that are given to us—for example, our place of birth or our skin color. Or those we choose to adopt such as author, coach, entrepreneur, or engineer. I love when leaders play with new identities to shape the impact they want to create. I once took on the title of “Chief Wizard” and added it to my email. Not only did it give me a different mindset around creating magic in the team, but it had fascinating reactions and responses from clients.
Others use their identities or passions from outside work to drive difference inside the organization. I have worked with a Head of Legal who brought her love of interior design to her brand as a leader. Her style of dress and the way she approached her work had flair and passion.
For myself I use two chosen identities to drive my style as a leader. The first is Refreshingly Direct which means that you will always know where you stand with me and no conversation that needs to be had will not happen. The second is that of a Recovering Imposter Syndrome Sufferer, which I use to encourage vulnerability in those around me to improve their impact and connection with others. Work on identity shaping and experimentation keeps your offering as a leader fresh and in many ways connected to your developing role and impact.
Duncan: Other than the obvious advice of “just leave,” what’s your counsel to a hard-charging, proactive person who’s eager to innovate but is stuck in a low-risk work environment?
Hunter: The mindset of living your life as a series of small low-risk, low-cost and small timescale experiments allow the hard-charging proactives among us to make daily incremental changes towards innovation. Just like the professional cycling teams, the ability to innovate in everything we do and focus on small incremental gains is the surest way to sustained innovation. Going big in innovation terms is tough and normally gets rejected either before it starts or at the first sign of risk. Small changes go under the radar—but added together can transform your teams, your service, and your success levels.
Duncan: What can leaders do to make it safe for others to fail, reflect, and learn?
Hunter: The ability of leaders to demonstrate humility and confess their failures is an essential first step. The way failure is celebrated and learned from is the second key step. The first bit of this is “celebrated”—the magic sauce is the “learn fast” mentality. If teams can see that getting an idea out early even when it’s not perfect, or “ugly” as Pixar calls it, means that they get quick feedback. This means they don’t waste effort on polishing a bad idea and they can make tweaks and changes.
The expression in Lean Start Up by Eric Ries that states, “If your product is perfect, it’s too late to market” reinforces this in modern businesses. You would not recognize the early versions of Pixar and Disney animated movies. That “ugly version” provides a feedback vehicle to the team. That feedback leads to inspired changes with animated films going on to be massive hits.
Duncan: What’s the first step in the model that a leader should take?
Hunter: With everything that leaders have faced in the last two years and will face in the coming years, the core need is for them to be able to thrive in a deeply human way in chaos. To do that they need to fuel and sustain their own personal energy. Like the flight attendants say in the safety briefings, “Put your own oxygen mask on first, before helping others with theirs.” Being properly selfish and fueling your own energy system is the first step—mentally and physically. That energy is what you need to lead your followers on their Hero’s Journey and sustain that daily experimentation and growth.
