You don’t fall down; you fall up

Hey,

I’ve been reading ’Radical Candor’ by Kim Scott. It’s a book about the management philosophy, where the key is to give and receive candid feedback, without being a jerk with no humanity.

I came across short, yet powerful sentences:

“In Silicon Valley, you don’t fall down; you fall up.”¹

In Managing at Apple, we often played a video of Steve [Jobs] explaining his approach to giving criticism. He captured something very important: “You need to do that in a way that does not call into question your confidence in their abilities but leaves not too much room for interpretation … and that’s a hard thing to do.” He went on to say, “I don’t mind being wrong. And I’ll admit that I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing.” Amen! Who could argue with that?²

Additionally, I found the blogpost from Derek Sivers:

I actually love being wrong, even though it cracks my confidence, because that’s the only time I learn. I actually love being lost, even though it fuels fears, because that’s when I go somewhere unexpected.³

I started thinking…

1. Instead of play win-lose game, I can play win-win game.
2. Either I succeed at something, or I learn from the failure. With this approach, I win either way. The only condition is, I don’t give up when I don’t succeed, but analyze and find the core of the fall down.
3. There is a room for improvement and learning something new, when I get being wrong. When I consider I’m right, what are the chances for improvement, since I care less what’s other opinion, because I’m right?
4. What would happen, if silently I start every conversation with the sentence “I might be wrong this time”, or going even bolder “I’m 100% wrong this time”?

Best, Olek

Footnotes:

Written in Difree | Graphics thanks to #dalle