This is an unusual blog for me. Usually I write about about data science learnings, exploring new concepts I learn, understanding new research papers in a journey to become better at my craft. The reason I write this, however, is because I wanted to share an important trait about leadership that I have not seen before from any of my previous bosses.
The idea of extreme ownership.
There are times when you make mistakes at work. It happens even to the best of us. For many — we own up to our mistakes and try to fix this the best we can. If you are lucky, you can fix your mistake before your boss captures you. I was not so lucky.
I had made the mistake of over-engineering a script (a classic rookie coding mistake where I underestimated how long something would take). I spent 2 weeks writing classes, improving my code with Python, trying to tweak as much as I could with logging, etc. instead of writing a simple script which should have taken half a day. This was a mistake on my part as I could have been working on more material things for the start-up. A result of significant underestimation of how long it would take on my part even after my boss has told me that he expected this to take far less time.
Afterwards, I apologised and told him it wouldn’t happen again. What he said next caught me by surprise.
“What could I have said or done to have helped you understand?” This was something I had never heard from leadership before. It was definitely something no previous boss of mine would have said.
This kicked in a level of respect for personal responsibility for my ex-military boss that I never had before and definitely took my own level of personal responsibility to another level. I believe it is something that is deeply rooted within NAVY SEAL Leaders (see Jocko Willink’s TED talk) where leaders take personal responsibility for each of their subordinate’s actions and behaviours.
The idea that you take responsibility for your employee’s mistake is not something common in white collar industry but it should be (see Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game).
As most of us now work remotely, I think now is as good as time as any to practice leadership. It is up to the leaders in organisations to take responsibility for what happens in an organisation through its ups and downs.
While this was a single instance, my previous boss had also made working for him incredible in a variety of ways. He treated my ideas seriously/never discouraged ideas and always explored them in depth and helped me establish a new standard for thinking (far, far more rigorous than even lead data scientists at most organisations). I always thought the excuse “but this is how it was always done” was unacceptable for any industry but was glad to hear this was also vocalised in someone I deeply respected.
Anyways, amidst these times, I hope everyone is doing well and are working hard to find ways to stay healthy while working from home!
I have included videos below that are leadership concepts that I believe in over the past years.
Jacky
- Ted talk:
2. Infinite game
