When did you decide you weren't good at that?

PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVES

ISSUE 25 | BAD DATA

On failure, self-diagnosis, and the lessons we learn too fast.

I wasn’t a very good CHRO.

At least not the first time around.

It was a hard job at a hard time.

And I made plenty of mistakes that were entirely mine.

We were integrating a major acquisition. Two cultures. New leaders. Significant cost pressure. A PE owner expecting us to move quickly.

The biggest mistake I made was saying yes to almost everything.

Performance management. Org design. Compensation. Titling and leveling. Succession. Leadership assessment. Benefits overhaul. A new HRIS.

All important. All at once.

I built a terrific team and had them working incredibly hard across far too many priorities because I hadn’t done the harder leadership work of deciding what we weren’t going to do.

I learned a lot from that job.

But one of the most important things I learned had nothing to do with HR.

It was how careful you have to be about the lesson you take from something that goes badly.

Because there was another conclusion available to me:

Maybe I’m just not cut out to be a CHRO.

And there was evidence for it.

I’d struggled.
I’d made mistakes.
There were things I hadn’t known how to do yet.

If I’d wanted to build a case against myself, I had plenty to work with.

But that would have been a much bigger conclusion than the evidence supported.

The lesson should be no bigger than the evidence

There’s a difference between:

I didn’t force enough choices.

and
I’m not capable of leading at this level.

Between:

I waited too long to involve people.

and
I’m bad at influencing senior leaders.

Between:

I wasn’t ready for parts of that job.

and
I shouldn’t have taken it.

The first conclusion gives you something to work on.
The second starts deciding what you’ll attempt next.

That’s the problem.

We tend to think the risk after failure is that we’ll ignore it. Blame the circumstances. Refuse to learn.

Sometimes.

But capable people can make the opposite mistake.

They learn too much from it.

One difficult boss becomes I don’t do well with CEOs like that.

One failed stretch assignment becomes I should stick to what I know I’m good at.

One layoff becomes I’ll never give a company that much again.

One bad experience starts explaining who you are.

And then it starts deciding where you go.

Senior leaders have a particularly tricky version of this problem

Early in your career, you get repetitions.

Another presentation.
Another project.
Another manager.
Another chance to lead a meeting that didn’t go particularly well the first time.

As you become more senior, some of the most important experiences happen only a handful of times.

Your first executive role.
Your first board presentation.
Your first acquisition.
Your first major financing problem.
Your first time leading a function you haven’t personally grown up in.
Your first time being accountable for decisions that affect hundreds of people.

You don’t always get enough repetitions to establish a pattern.

Sometimes you get one data point.

And it’s very easy to give that data point far more authority than it deserves.

A first attempt at something genuinely difficult can tell you a lot about what you need to learn.

It can’t always tell you whether you’re capable of learning it.

Those are different questions.

What does the evidence actually say?

When something goes badly, try separating these two sentences:

The evidence says: ________

I am tempted to make it mean: ________

For my first CHRO role:

The evidence says: I took on too many priorities, failed to force enough tradeoffs, and asked an excellent team to carry the consequences.

I could have made it mean: I’m not cut out to lead an HR function.

Very different lesson.

Try it with something you’re carrying now.

Maybe:

The evidence says: My recommendation didn’t persuade the executive team.

I am tempted to make it mean: They don’t value my judgment.

Or:

The evidence says: The first six months in this role have been much harder than I expected.

I am tempted to make it mean: This job is too big for me.

Or:

The evidence says: I trusted someone who ultimately didn’t have my back.

I am tempted to make it mean: I can't trust anyone.

The second sentence may turn out to be true.

But don’t skip the analysis and promote it straight to fact.

What I took with me

I didn’t leave that first CHRO job feeling very good about how I’d done.

But I did leave knowing what I wanted to do differently the next time.

I wanted to make harder choices earlier. To decide what mattered most before the work expanded to fill every available inch. To stop treating every legitimate business need as an immediate HR priority.

And to remember that leadership isn’t proving how much your team can carry.

Sometimes it’s deciding what they shouldn’t have to.

Those were useful lessons.

I took them into my next CHRO role, and they changed how I led.

I became a much better CHRO.

Not because the first experience had told me I wasn’t cut out for the job.

Because it had shown me what I needed to learn.

That’s the difference.