Thoughts on leadership


Matt Baker
Commander, U.S. Coast Guard


Sometimes the wrong idea is the best idea

In 2008 two graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design had an idea to help pay the rent for their San Francisco apartment. After noticing a shortage of hotel rooms for an upcoming industrial design conference in the city, they set up three air mattresses in their living room and offered them for $80 a night on a website named airbedandbreakfast.com. Demand for their inexpensive pneumatic accommodation was so great they were able to choose their guests from a large field of applicants. They expanded their website in time for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, where they paired about 100 hosts with eager guests. This initial success landed them a spot at Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup incubator. With their business model sharpened by time in the incubator, they started meeting with potential investors.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were certain their idea to let people rent extra space in their homes to total strangers would be huge. The first investors they spoke to thought they were crazy. The investors were certain that although Brian and Joe’s business had found a few young tech enthusiasts comfortable with crashing at a stranger’s place, most people would not be. The investors feared Brian and Joe would not be able to scale their business large enough to be worthy of investment, so none of them did. But the two persevered, still convinced of their idea’s merit. They grew the business by learning more about the people who used their service as hosts or guests. Eventually their success drew attention in the tech media, drawing the attention of more open-minded investors. Today, Airbnb has revenue of more than $4 billion a year and tens of millions of people around the world have used the service. Brian and Joe were right. The initial investors were wrong.

You may have already concluded that the leadership lesson in this story comes from Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia: stick to your ideas, no matter what anyone else thinks. I see a greater lesson to be learned from the initial investors that passed on Airbnb: they were wrong. As human beings, our initial judgment is not always going to be right. As leaders, we are always at risk of making the wrong choice. What if sticking to our ideas dooms us to failure? How do we know when someone else’s idea, one we think is wrong, is actually right?

One person is in charge, but that doesn’t mean there’s only one person with ideas

Leaders, particularly military leaders, are taught that the person in the charge is ultimately responsible for everything that happens to their team. The emphasis on singular responsibility prompts many leaders to believe that they must also be the singular source of ideas about the way ahead, even when other team members have differing opinions. These leaders use the false assumption that they alone would pay the price of failure to justify overvaluing their own perspective or judgment. They are convinced that in order to be true to themselves and uphold their responsibility, they must always do what they think is the right thing, even if subordinates or peers advocate for alternatives.

There is an obvious problem with this decision making model. What if the leader is wrong? What if someone else on the team has a better idea, but the leader’s sense of self-importance means it is ignored? The team’s performance is harmed, leading to the exact outcome the singularly-focused leader was trying to avoid.

No one is ever always right. No one has a monopoly on great new ideas. In a brainstorming contest, a team of people will always defeat an individual.

There’s only one way to find out about new ideas

Great leaders entertain or even implement other’s ideas even if they don’t agree with them at first. They recognize that if they’re skeptical of someone else’s idea in preference to their own, they may be going down the path tread by the investors that passed on Airbnb. To guard against that possibility, great leaders deliberately remain curious about differing ideas. They give other people opportunity to sell their idea on merit. Instead of quickly deciding based on their initial impression, great leaders hear people out. These leaders may still find that their initial impression was correct and reject the idea, but they may also discover that they were wrong and decide to go in the direction proposed by someone else. Either way, the leader has ensured the team is moving out in the best direction. The team’s best performance is still the goal.

The key to this careful decision making strategy is to find the balance between embracing other’s ideas and remaining responsible for the team’s actions. A leader cannot stop thinking critically and outsource all idea generation to other people. There will be occasions when a leader must act according to their judgment without unanimous support. However, I believe that usually leaders can give others’ ideas a chance without putting the team at risk. Time is the critical factor. The earlier a leader can engage others before a final decision must be made, the more space the team has to create, develop, and even pilot test alternatives.

To allow the best ideas to bubble up from inside, be looking far ahead outside

Beyond curiosity, I see two other leadership skills important to making sure a team finds the best ideas. The first is the ability to see new things coming early. Leaders need to be forward-looking and externally aware. Someone who recognizes changes in the world that will affect their team in the future can lead a more creative response than someone who is surprised by new developments. The latter may be forced to make a quick, unilateral decision while the former has time to allow everyone to contribute to the decision making process.

The second necessary leadership skill is humility. A leader needs to be able to survive the hit to their ego prompted by discussing or implementing someone else’s way ahead. Doing what a leader considers to be the wrong thing is the opposite of all conventional wisdom. The approach to others’ ideas I’m suggesting can create feelings of stress or anxiety in a leader who feels they’re proceeding counter to their gut instinct. But leaders should remember that like anyone else, their gut instinct could be wrong. By remaining humble about their own fallibility, a great leader can endure the time spent giving other’s ideas a chance until reaching the final decision point. Once there, the leader’s anxiety will be replaced either by a sense of surprise and excitement when a new idea turns out to be better than the leader expected, or a sense of satisfaction that even when tested against other’s alternatives, the leader’s initial instinct was proven correct.

Embrace others’ ideas to build an inclusive, high performing team

A leader that gives others’ ideas a chance will strengthen their team in other ways. First and most importantly, a leader who gives others’ ideas a chance is demonstrating the curiosity that builds an inclusive climate. There may be no better way to make every member of a team feel valued than to allow them to develop or implement their ideas, even if they are contrary to the leader’s initial judgment. A leader open to others’ ideas reaps all the benefits of an inclusive climate: motivation and commitment will be high, and the best recruits will line up at the door. Those high performing team members will deploy their creativity without limit, creating a self-reinforcing culture of innovation that will enable the team to outperform others led by single-point decision makers.

Another huge benefit of an open ideas culture is the development of shared responsibility among the entire team, rather than singular responsibility with the leader alone. If the leader entertains or implements ideas from everyone on the team, they will all gain a sense of ownership for the outcome. That ownership empowers people to address problems or make improvements on all the little things they see but perhaps the senior leader does not. Those improvements at all levels of an organization add up. A single-point decision maker discourages those independent action because people fear they can’t act without the leader’s concurrence. The leader will either be swamped by requests to approve choices that should be made at a lower level, or the choices will never be made and improvements never implemented. By giving all team members a chance to present their ideas, a great leader inspires them to innovate for the benefit of everyone else.

An open mind for others’ ideas is another form of courage

Leaders reluctant to give a chance to ideas they don’t like are driven by fear of failure. Much like the investors who passed on Airbnb because they were certain people would be afraid to host strangers in their homes, fear can drive leaders to make poor choices. But those poor choices may lead to the exact outcome they were trying to avoid. Leaders with the courage to develop or implement ideas advocated by others, even when they seem inferior at first, will enjoy the best outcomes for their team. Showing a little trust in others, while remembering we’re not perfect ourselves, could led to an innovation that changes the world.

Great leaders embrace new things

Deep Work - a book by Cal Newport