Accidentally in Code

Once, I got an email. To paraphrase, it said: I ignored your recommendation, but new evidence arrived, and now I see that you were right. I won’t do that again.

A rare enough thing that I can, years later, still quote it.

Part of what made it so meaningful was this person didn’t have to tell me this. I had no way to know he’d ignored my recommendation. I didn’t even mind that he hadn’t gone with my recommendation – the information that was my job to gather was just one piece of the picture.

I was talking to a friend recently, and one of our topics of shared frustration was the inability of people to admit when they are wrong. The mental gymnastics that ensue.

I enjoyed our shared moment of gossip and judgement, of course.

However, the next morning it connected to something else I’d said in that same conversation, about a project I was doing, where I used phrases such as “knowing what I know now”, and “what I’d tell someone trying to do this”…

And realized I was doing the same thing. That I had new information, but I was sticking to the plan I’d made without that information.

So I made a new plan.

Terrifying.

But clarifying.

The old plan wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t the best plan that could be made with the information available. I debated what to do with it. Then I thought about me three months from now, and asked myself – do I want to regret not making this change then?

I did not. I shared the document with the CEO. After we’d got to an agreement, I told her:

I realized I can just incorporate new information and make a better plan without it threatening my sense of self

She replied:

YES you CAN

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I think admitting when your opinion has changed, and why, is an underrated leadership skill. If you’re publicly wrong, not admitting that doesn’t change anything – getting to be less wrong means admitting that you have changed your mind. If you don’t do that, the people around you – particularly under you – feel gaslit. If you do, they trust you more.

We’re all wrong at times. But in an industry being upended, I think we have to accept that we’re all going to be wrong more often than ever.

Terrifying.

But freeing?

I think it can be.