blog-post
Sign up for weekly blog
Stephen Mayo | The Gift of Guessing

The Gift of Guessing

Nov. 22, 2020

"Let's work the problem, people.  Let's not make things worse by guessing"

          - Flight Director Gene Kranz in the 1995 film Apollo 13

 

Nearly all work involves some amount of guessing.

Guessing is useful, because it's fast and easy, and sometimes it's more effective to guess and change course if we're wrong, than to make sure everything is right before we act.

But sometimes we guess when it would be more effective to work the problem.

 

We guess for lots of reasons: to save time, to save money, to save face...

The key is to guess out of choice, not out of convenience or comfort.

There's no instruction manual for making that distinction.  But learning to do even more effectively is an essential part of growing as a leader.




View all blogs
Previous Blog Next Blog