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I had breakfast with a friend of mine who just took over a very senior position at Facebook. And what we were talking about is, is one of the things that people do when they take on a new position is they’re just doing things all the time. They take on this new position, they have the list of all the things that they’re going to accomplish, and they’re just go, go, go. And oftentimes they fail to do most of these things because they didn’t take the time to really learn the lay of the land. They don’t take the time to stop and talk to people. They don’t spend the first couple weeks just learning. They think that they were chosen for this position because they know everything. And that the person that they’re replacing, or the people that were there before, they didn’t know what they were doing.
And so I think one of the ways that ego plays a role in our lives when we are ascending into the management position is assuming, one, that there is no transition. And assuming, two, that we know everything we need to know to handle this new responsibility. I think a more humble leader, and a leader more disposed to be successful, is the one who talks to everyone involved first. Who takes some time just to simply observe and understand the terrain of the position they’re going to be in. That doesn’t think, I’ve thought about this position for a week, I already know more than the people who have been living and working in this space for months or even years.
And so if one can approach these things with a little bit more humility, what they gain in that is, one, all the institutional knowledge that’s already there. And they avoid running off any cliffs, or falling into any traps that maybe the people that came before them had already fallen into.
You look at someone like John DeLorean, who was a brilliant engineer, he was high up at General Motors. He felt like that company wasn’t run well, and he wanted to strike out on his own. And he designs, or comes up with, what could have been a very successful vehicle. In fact, it’s looked at as somewhat ahead of its time now. But the management structure that he brought was so reactionary.
General Motors was this conservative, American, early 20th-century company. And he wanted to do everything differently. And he sort of threw the baby out with the bathwater there. He didn’t have a clear management structure. One of the executives said his management style was chasing colored balloons. He was just sort of running from project to project. He would alternate between micromanaging and not managing at all.
And so he didn’t have that executive, clear leadership that one needs in addition to having great ideas. And I think a lot of times when we advance to these senior roles, we don’t give enough consideration to that. We just wing it, and it doesn’t work.