Sir Kenneth Robinson, an author, educator, speaker, and recognized authority on creativity, has said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” Think about that. He’s right, isn’t he? Trace any great achievement to its roots . . . whether in business, medicine, the arts, literature, music, education, or any other endeavor you can imagine . . . and you’ll find someone who was willing to risk ridicule (and often much more) to try something different. But let’s stay focused on business. Why doesn’t a business owner or CEO dare to be wrong?
It has to do with leadership. Or rather, a flawed view of leadership.
A poor leader may try to project an image of omniscience or infallibility. To protect that image, he or she will be risk averse, loathe to try anything new. And when things do go wrong (as they inevitably do) this leader will try to blame the problem on outside conditions (the economy, the Chinese, the high cost of energy, etc.) which were beyond his or her control. This leader will do whatever is necessary to avoid saying, “I screwed up. I was wrong.” After all, that would be a sign of weakness, a chink in the armor of infallibility. But by not doing that, this leader is sending a message to the rest of the organization that “we don’t tolerate being wrong around here.” As a result, everyone begins emulating the boss, avoiding both risk and responsibility. That’s not a very good recipe for developing a strong, growing, vibrant company.
A good leader, on the other hand, is authentic . . . meaning he or she shows up as a regular human being and doesn’t try to hide behind a pretense of always being right. This leader owns up to missteps and accepts responsibility. This leader sees mistakes as Thomas Edison did, as a learning experience. And guess what? This too trickles down to the rest of the organization. When people see that the boss is tolerant of failed experiments, they are willing to be creative, to try new things, to take a few risks now and then.
None of this is to say we should be reckless about the risks we take or that we should be tolerant of problems caused by carelessness or ineptitude. We should, in fact, always strive to be right by bringing all the knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, and experience we can to our decision-making process. But when you’re trying to be innovative, you have to acknowledge that since this hasn’t been done before, it’s possible it won’t turn out the way you expect. In those cases, you have to dare to be wrong and allow others to do the same, or as Sir Kenneth Robinson admonishes, “you will never come up with anything original.”
