On Being Wrong
We've built a culture that demands leaders never fail — and in doing so, we've made good leadership nearly impossible. Boaz argues that the ability to be wrong well is not a soft trait but a central performance skill. Leaders who can't update reality eventually make everyone else pay for the performance of certainty.
What this edition is about
We ask leaders to be certain and then punish them for being wrong. Boaz's argument is that this combination doesn't produce better decisions — it produces better performances of confidence, which is a different and far more expensive thing.
Being wrong well is a specific skill: noticing early, saying it out loud, and updating the plan before the organisation has committed further resources to a position that no longer holds. Leaders who can't do this don't avoid the cost. They transfer it to their teams, their customers and their balance sheets.
The edition makes the case that a culture where correction is cheap outperforms a culture where certainty is mandatory — every time, over a long enough horizon.
- Demanding infallibility from leaders produces performances of certainty, not better judgment.
- Being wrong well is a skill: notice early, say it out loud, update the plan.
- The cost of unspoken error doesn't vanish — it moves onto the team.
- Cheap correction beats mandatory certainty over any meaningful time horizon.
Executives and team leaders who set the cost of admitting error in their organisation.
This page is a summary. The full edition — with the stories and the detail — lives on Substack.
Read “On Being Wrong”On this edition
The opposite, in my experience. Teams already know when a call isn't working. Naming it early buys you credibility and saves the resources that would go into defending it. What actually erodes authority is watching a leader hold a position everyone else can see has failed.
Make correction cheaper than concealment, starting with your own. When the leader updates a call publicly and nothing bad happens, the team learns the real rule. If the only visible behaviour is defending decisions, that's the behaviour you'll get back, along with the cost of it.