to see it from another perspective. It is common practice now
for marketing people to sit in on product planning, but it
should be equally common practice for product designers and
planners to go out into the marketplace. Other areas into
which aspiring leaders should rotate are long-term planning,
client negotiations, sales, and—again—overseas slots.
The higher the stakes, the more opportunities there are for
learning—and, of course, the more opportunities there are
for failures and mistakes. But as we have seen, failures and
mistakes are major sources of vital experience. As virtually
every leader I talked with said, there can be no growth with-
out risks and no progress without mistakes. Indeed, if you
don’t make mistakes, you aren’t trying hard enough. But as
mistakes are necessary, so is a healthy organizational attitude
toward them. First, risk taking must be encouraged. Second,
mistakes must be seen as an integral part of the process, so
that they are regarded as normal, not abnormal. Third, cor-
rective action rather than censure must follow.
Aviator Brooke Knapp said, “There are two kinds of people:
those who are paralyzed by fear, and those who are afraid but go
ahead anyway. Life isn’t about limitation, it’s about options.” A
healthy organizational culture encourages the belief in options.
In this same area, as we’ve seen, and as Morgan McCall et al.
also found, potential leaders learn as much, if not more, from
difficult bosses as good bosses. But feedback is always more
productive than confrontations, and honesty is always better,
and more instructive, than meaningless pleasantries.
All organizations, especially those that are growing, walk a
tightrope between stability and change, tradition and revi-
sion. Therefore they must have some means for reflecting
on their own experiences and offering reflective structures to
their employees.
On Becoming a Leader