I had the best January my agency had ever had a few years back. Top of the funnel was full. New deals were closing. The team was firing on all cylinders. I walked out of the last week of the month feeling like I had finally figured something out.
Then February happened. Then March happened. Then April happened.
Four months of declining sales after our best month ever. Not a cliff. Just a slow, steady, grinding pullback that I could not at first explain. Every Monday I sat down with my numbers and watched a bigger gap open between where we were and where I had told myself we were going to be.
I learned more in those four months than I had in the four months of the run-up. And I want to walk you through the lessons, because if you lead anything for long enough, this is your year too.
Maxwell's frame
When John Maxwell talks about failure, he says two sentences that I cannot get out of my head.
"Success beside failure creates humility. Failure beside success creates resilience."
You need both. Most leaders only get one half. The leaders I respect most all have a story like the one I just told - a stretch where things were great and then they were not, and they had to figure out which kind of leader they were going to be on the other side.
The two-sentence frame is the test. If you have only had success, you are probably less humble than you think. If you have only had failure, you are probably less resilient than you think. The combination - succeeding, failing, getting back up, succeeding again - is what makes a leader durable.
Failure by itself does not teach you anything. Failure right next to a recent success, where you have something to compare it against, is one of the most clarifying experiences in leadership.
The hole on the sidewalk
There is a poem by Portia Nelson that has been on my wall for years. It walks through five chapters of a person's relationship with a single hole on the sidewalk.
Chapter one: the person walks down the street, falls in the hole, and blames everyone else. Chapter two: same street, same hole, pretends they did not see it. Chapter three: same street, sees the hole, falls in anyway because that is what they always do. Chapter four: same street, walks around the hole. Chapter five: a different street.
Most leaders I know are stuck somewhere between chapter two and chapter three. We see the hole. We know it is there. We tell ourselves this time will be different. And then we fall in again.
It is never the first fall that defines you. It is not even the second. It is the third one - the one where you can no longer pretend you did not see it coming - that is the moment of decision. You either keep telling yourself the story that the hole is the problem, or you start telling yourself the truth that the street is the problem.
- What is the hole I have fallen into three times now?
- What story have I been telling myself about why this time will be different?
- What is the boring weekly rhythm that would put me on a different street?
- Who is the one person who will not let me off the hook on it?
What is the different street, and what is the next step you have to take to be on it by the end of the month?
