Thread by @dohertyjf

I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but here you go.

If you’re the leader and your team isn’t doing well/winning, it’s 💯 your fault.

Good news is that you can fix it and learn from your mistakes.

Some have been saying that the black/whiteness here frustrates them.

I actually think this one is black and white. If you are the leader and in charge, you are responsible IMO for success/failure.

Also, failure isn't necessarily bad, and we should all do it many times a day.

I think there are a few big ideas encapsulated in my 280 character tweet that I'd like to unpack, to make my thinking more clear to you.

I should probably also do a podcast episode about this topic.

Here we go.

I said "the leader". What I meant there was "the CEO" or "the founder".

Oftentimes things don't work out well for a combination of reasons:
- poor planning
- poor execution

If the planning was poor, as the leader that's on you because of hiring decisions, approvals (or lack thereof), and training. There may be some other reasons in there, but if the team you are in charge of didn't plan well and you didn't correct, guess what?

That's your fault.

If the planning was good but the execution was poor, then as the leader you didn't set up good processes for training and setting your team up for success.

Guess what?

That's also your fault.

Now, failure sucks. But it's not the end of the world. We can (and should) always learn from our mistakes, try to do them better next time, get coaching, and constantly be improving.

Like parenthood (long days/short years), careers are long but many things feel uber-important.

I prefer to take a long view. I've f-d up many times as a leader, as an employee, as an entrepreneur. Do I have regrets? Absolutely.

But I keep going. I try to learn from my past, figure out what I could've done better, and try to do it better next time.

And all along the way, I give myself and others grace to screw up, learn, and keep going.

/fin