Invested
I got a call one Sunday afternoon from the drilling rig. This was unusual. My job was to do the theoretical work and hand it off to the planning engineers. They in turn wrote work instructions for the operations crew, the team who ran the drilling rig. A call on Sunday afternoon couldn’t be good.
It was a simple question with a sharp point. “Is there any way YOUR burst disks could be installed backwards?” Mine, huh. Here it comes.
I had developed some technology that could protect an oil well from thermally induced pressure buildup. It didn’t matter that my design was solid, that it passed an extensive qualification series, or that it would later gain widespread use across the oil industry.[1] I had failed to consider the quality control aspects of installing this tiny, fool-proof device. Now I had an angry drilling engineer informing me that my oversight had shut down an expensive rig.
“My” Burst Disk
The disk itself cost around $100. Porting and threading the hole in a coupling brought the cost of deployment to $1,000. It cost $16 million to fix the problem and get the well back on track.
$16,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros.
When all was said and done, I sheepishly went into my supervisor’s office. I mumbled something about not being able to pay back the money in several lifetimes and that I understood if he needed to fire me. “Fire you?! We just invested $16 million in you. Why would we fire you?”
That was 2003. It was a defining moment that I have relived over and over. My supervisor gave me the coaching that would last a lifetime. He didn’t need to solve my problem or tell me what to do.[2] Without saying the words, he challenged me to learn and grow from the $16 million investment.
For the past 12 years, I have held a director-level role in the same company that invested so heavily in me. My technical work has repaid the organization 100-fold. I provide coaching and direction for the senior-level technical leaders of our organization. To my core, I am a geeky introvert, not a born leader. So how did this happen?
Leaders are Made
Eve Poole removes all doubt. She says, “leaders are made, not born.”[3] Her book, Leadersmithing, is an excellent compilation of 17 abilities required to lead an organization. Her point 6 is, “Accepting when you get it wrong.”[4] In my case, I got it really wrong! Throughout my journey, I can recall personal examples of learning for most of her 17 Critical Incidents. Poole supplements the list of what is needed with an insightful chapter on character, “the very thing that will save you when everything else is stripped away.”[5] Character is a litmus test for the people I develop. When something goes wrong, I want to see how they handle it. Is it a personal failure, someone else’s fault, or an opportunity to get better?
Arriving at the end of Poole’s Leadersmithing theory, my judgement of the book was, “I agree.” That doesn’t make for a compelling blog post, so I pull Adler and van Doren off the shelf.[6] Upon reflection, a better summation is that I mostly agree.
10,000 Hours and a Dose of Panic
Poole states that her research and the 17 Critical Incidents are aimed at leaders headed for the C-suite.[7] I doubt her intent is to exclude the rest of us. Her teaching is practical for me, and I’m several levels away from the highest echelon of our $90 billion company. I appreciate that this is a book on general leadership rather than the technical leadership where my experience lies.
I was surprised to see Poole dismiss Malcolm Gladwell’s characterization of 10,000 hours of practice to create mastery.[8] 10,000 hours equates to five years of concentrated work. It took me six to seven years to become an industry-recognized expert in my discipline, and that was in a fast-paced consulting house where every engagement presented a new challenge. Furthermore, many business schools expect students to have ten years of work experience so that they can contribute to a collaborative learning environment. I already had 10,000 hours of technical mastery before working on my leadership gaps through an MBA program. Poole is neglecting the journey that her students made prior to enrolling at Ashridge Business School.
I am also skeptical that her simulations can replicate exposure to the Critical Incidents.[9] She says as much in the introduction, stating that, “the more emotionally charged the situation is in which these skills are acquired, the deeper the resulting memory and its retrievability under pressure in the future.”[10] I agree that the case study method used in many business schools contributes to a valuable learning environment. There is no comparison between preparing a classical case on the bubble-memory incident[11] to the stress of being told how your disks have shut down a $750,000 per day operation. I can barely remember the particulars of the bubble-memory case.
These two minor points do not diminish the value of Poole’s excellent work. I raise them to underscore the time and effort required to build leaders. Leadership doesn’t just happen.
[1] M.L. Payne, P.D. Pattillo, U.B. Sathuvalli, R.A. Miller, and R. Livesay, “Advanced Topics for Critical Service Deepwater Well Design.” Paper presented at Deep Offshore Technology, Marseille, November 19-21, 2003.
[2] Tom Camacho. Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching. London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2019, 63.
[3] Eve Poole. Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership. London New York, NY: Bloomsbury Business, 2017, 2.
[4] Poole, 18.
[5] Poole, 47.
[6] Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. Revised and Updated edition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
[7] Poole, 10.
[8] Poole, 3.
[9] Poole, 10.
[10] Poole, 3.
[11] Richard F. Vancil. “IBM Corp.: The Bubble-Memory Incident.” Harvard Business School Case 180-042, October 1979. (Revised January 1983.)
About the Author
Rich
8 responses to “Invested”
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Fully agreed with you on the merits of experience, Rich. I spent 30 minutes on a call with a consultant this week trying to explain why performing assessments for cultural intelligence will do very little to actually improve someone’s cultural intelligence. A paltry one month (672 hours) spent immersed in another country will impart more than any amount of books, lectures, or other second- or third-order learning.
I think simulation is fine, as long it’s acknowledged that it is relatively low-risk practice rather than the $750,000/day real thing. There’s just no direct substitute for experience.
Rich, I’m thinking about your burst disk. This may be a little off-topic. I don’t know anything about engineering. I will assume it ‘fails’ at a known pressure and temperature to stop catastrophic thermal runaway. This piece serves sacrificially, and its failure prevents other, more critical things from failing. Do I have that right? That got me curious about what a burst disk in leadership would look like. If this part of my leadership fails, then I know I’m in bad shape. Does that even make sense? What would that look like for you?
You summarized it well and I appreciate the analogy. In the general sense, a rupture disk is a one-time pressure relief device. It is designed to hold pressure that is useful for an operation and vent when the pressure builds to the point that it threatens integrity.
The analogy works for leadership. Some pressure is good. It causes me to focus. It reveals when something is important to others. Poole would say that it improves learning and recall of those lessons. Pressure is often the context when our character is strengthened. Too much pressure can ruin the whole person. A pressure relief valve can protect the person from lasting damage.
For the past 10+ years, my burst disk is running. I don’t enjoy it, but I love the effects. A doctor encouraged me to chart my blood pressure against exercise and I learned that three hard runs a week was sufficient to keep me off medication. My wife Michaela has the freedom to tell me to go for a run. It’s code, and it’s helpful.
The benefits aren’t just physical. I sometimes run to clear my mind. I definitely run when I’m in need of a prayer closet. I often pray for friends as I pass through their neighborhoods. Mike Hansen was a frequent recipient early last summer as he was contemplating joining the DLGP. Somewhere around mile 4, I become much more receptive to His voice. More than once, I’ve pointed out to God that I’m nearing home and He hasn’t answered. C.S. Lewis pointed out through Lucy that He’s “not like a tame lion.”
Camacho used the illustration of putting our oxygen mask on first before helping others.[1] I hope you have your own burst disks for the sake of your congregation.
[1] Tom Camacho. “Mining for Gold: Developing Kingdom Leaders through Coaching.” London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2019, 163.
Rich,
Thank you for sharing your $16 million story. I can only assume that those following days and weeks were personally challenging, even with the support of your supervisor.
Poole gave an interesting TED Talk in which she walked through the process of creating a series of “mini-simulations” in real life to develop muscle memory and a template that can be used in a scaled-up crisis. It seems that this would be a much more productive learning experience compared to static case studies. Do you think this kind of accelerated learning experience could decrease the time investment of 10,000+ hours of on-the-job experience?
Mini-simulations can absolutely help with building muscle memory. I’ll give an example. One of our new hires just went through well control school, a three-day course on the principles and practices of how to keep high pressure hydrocarbons under control while drilling. Drilling influxes thankfully do not happen very often. Going to the rig to learn well control will be met with endless days of waiting for something to happen. In contrast, I guarantee that several simulated influxes occurred in the training lab earlier this week, affording our young engineer the chance to put her hands on the valves and regain control of the operation. She told me that the technical description sounded easy, but successfully reacting to a ‘live’ well was a different story. Tremendous learning can come through failure. I’m glad she could learn at the risk of somewhat public humiliation rather than the loss of health, safety, and the environment.
At some point, maybe last week, the question of who let an engineer into this program will inevitably come up. I blame Cliff.
Thanks Rich – I am thankful your here!
What a story! I appreciate the photo you included in your post. It must have been tough to face your supervisor, even though he saw your mistake as a lesson rather than a reason to let you go. I agree; leadership doesn’t just happen. Do you think everyone is born a leader, needing to develop their skills gradually over their lives, or do people become leaders because they invest 10,000 hours or more and earn their leadership status?
In the movie Ratatouille, chef Auguste Gusteau claimed that anyone can cook. The food critic Anton Ego hated that notion but later came to believe that “Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere.”[1] Ego’s maxim applies to leadership as well as cooking. I think Gusteau’s generalization for cooking applies to leadership, but only if we get creative with the definition.
What makes a leader? Turn around and see if anyone is following. One by one, I am mentally scrolling through faces belonging to people with developmental challenges that, on first appearance, have no leadership potential. Julia might be the extreme example. She lived for several decades operating on little more than her brain stem. She could not talk nor care for her physical needs. It is difficult to see the potential. Yet her mother found joy and respite spending one-on-one time. She had 19 other children from around the globe. Independence is a sliding scale across the spectrum of abilities and needs. Somehow, Julia’s sweet spirit gave life to the mom. That might be a very non-traditional picture of leadership, but I’d suggest that Julia had one person that depended on her and what she could give.
For the more traditional vision of leadership, a simple “no” will suffice. I agree that leaders are made, not born. Some people are followers, and 100,000 hours will not change that. Some people have character issues that get in the way of leadership. This does not diminish the necessity of a good follower. Movements happen because someone went second. I’d rather be a good follower than a bad leader.
[1] Ratatouille, directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava. Buena Vista Pictures, 2007.