Workplace Judo: Steve Jobs’ Lesson

September 5, 2017

I was never a fan of Steve Jobs.  Yes, he was the “cool” choice in the Apple-Microsoft battle to become Dominator-of-the-Whole-Entire-World, but I was a Bill Gates enthusiast, with all his nerdy, corporate plotting.

That said, it was Jobs who gave me one of the biggest “ahas” of my professional life. I was watching him being interviewed some years ago, and in response to a question about whether a potentially expensive and damaging problem would come to pass, he simply replied, “Well, either it will or it won’t.” 

That stopped me in my tracks.  I had expected this titan of the most valuable company in the world to be a little more, I don’t know, concerned.  After reflecting on it, I realized that he was very concerned, but he also knew what he could and could not control.  No doubt his entire organization was working ferociously to prevent this potentially expensive and damaging problem from coming to pass, but the simple truth was that, in the end, there were only two possible outcomes: either it would or it wouldn’t, and he would deal with whichever one it was. 

That understanding—that what happens happens—is what helps successful executives win.  It’s an ability to accept outcomes dispassionately, and then to get on with it.

For many, this is a difficult mindset to adopt.  When faced with a failure, too many of us second-guess the decision-making that led up to it, or beat ourselves up about the outcome.  Learning from a bad decision is one thing.  Condemning yourself for making that decision in the first place is quite another.

True leaders look even the worst outcomes in the face and say, “Ok, that happened.  Now how do I fix it?”  It’s just that simple.  If you find yourself traveling the slippery slope from “That didn’t go well,” to “I must have made a bad decision,” to “I’m clearly a terrible decision-maker,” you’re entering the drama zone.  Turn around and get yourself out of there immediately. 

And remember that great leaders are not playing a game of chess, anticipating four, five, and six moves out in an attempt to find the perfect answer.  There is no perfect answer.  There is only what you decide, and then what happens next.  Successful leaders make this decision now, based on what they know now, and then accept the outcome.  Then they use that learning to make the next decision and accept the outcome, and then use that learning to make the next decision and accept the outcome, and so forth.

In other words, you make the best judgment and move on, then make the best judgment and move on.  That doesn’t mean you don’t plan or strategize.  You just don’t overthink it. 

But you do trust your own judgment.  If you are one of those highly responsible and conscientious people who triple-check everything and research each decision exhaustively, consider that this may just be cover for a lack of confidence in your own judgment.   

If you are one of these people, I know that you’re concerned about getting it “right.” But I’m here to tell you that there is no “right.”  Think of any political or business leader you admire.  Have you agreed with every call they have made?  Have all of their decisions worked out well?  Probably not.  But they did have the chutzpah to make each one of those decisions in the first place.  And that, my friends, is the difference between real leaders and everyone else.  It’s not that they’re right, but rather that they have the guts to act on what they believe is right, and if they’re really good, to convince others that they’re right.

Leaders make the call and put a line in the sand saying, “Yep, none of us knows how this is going to turn out, but I’m making Decision A and I’m standing by it.  The buck stops with me, whatever happens next.”   

For many, this is a pretty scary thing to do.  But that’s the risk of leadership.  You have to be willing to put your judgment—in essence, yourself—on the line.  And you can only do that when you have rock-solid confidence in yourself.  When you do—like Mr. Jobs did—then accepting outcomes dispassionately becomes quite easy.  If the outcome is good, you use it to extend your lead.  If the outcome is bad, you fix it and keep going. 

It’s just that simple.