Latest / Lead With Clarity: Practical Insight for Senior Leaders / The Cost of Not Trying
Transcript
- Blake Holman: Welcome to Lead with Clarity. This is a space for leaders who want to grow without losing themselves in the process. Each episode is a short reflection on leadership, influence, and the inner work that shapes how we show up for others. It's not hype, not noise, just clear thinking for the journey of leading well. Today's episode is entitled The Cost of Not Trying. Here we go. Today I want to talk about a sentence that sounds simple until you actually try to live by it. Roy T. Bennett wrote, Do not fear failure, but rather fear not trying. I've read that line numerous times and it still lands differently depending upon where I am in a given time of leadership. Let me tell you about a leadership moment that brings this to life. Years ago, I sat across from an executive who had a decision sitting on her desk for months. Not a small decision, a restructuring call that would reshape her division. She had the data, she had the recommendation from her team, What she did not have was certainty that it would work. So she waited. She called it due diligence. She called it being thorough. What it actually was, was fear wearing a business suit. Here's the common misread. Most of us think the opposite of courage is failure. It's not. The opposite of courage is paralysis. Failure is loud. It shows up. It costs you something and then it's over. Paralysis is quiet. It doesn't cost you anything today. It costs you everything slowly in decisions not made, in people not developed, in opportunities that expire while you're still gathering one more data point. So let's reframe this. Trying and failing leaves you with information. It leaves you with a scar, sure, but also a lesson, a sharper instinct, a story you can teach from. Not trying leaves you with nothing. No lesson, no scar. just the quiet erosion of an opportunity that you'll only recognize in hindsight, usually right around the time someone else takes the swing that you didn't. I think about this in the context of how much easier it has become to gather information before you act. If you're leading in an environment where AI tools help you model scenarios, forecast outcomes, or stress test a plan before you commit to it, that's a real advantage. But I want to be careful here because I've watched leaders use that advantage the wrong way. They use better information as a reason to delay the decision instead of a reason to make it with more confidence. The tool can narrow your uncertainty. It cannot make the call for you. That is still yours and it always will be. Whether or not you have any of those tools in your leadership environment, the principle underneath this doesn't change. Good judgment isn't about eliminating risk. It's about being willing to act while risk is still present because it will always be there. There is no version of leadership where you get to wait until it's safe. Here's what I want you to carry forward. Think about one decision that you've been sitting on. Not a hypothetical one, a real one, sitting on your desk right now, the way that restructuring calls sat on her desk. Ask yourself honestly whether you're waiting because you genuinely need more information or because you're afraid of what happens if you're wrong. Those are two different problems and they call for two different responses. Let's close from where we started. Failure was never the thing to fear. It's specific, it's survivable, and it teaches you something every single time. What should concern you is the version of your leadership that never got tested, the decisions that quietly expired on your desk, the team that learned to hesitate because they watched you hesitate first. Don't fear failure. Fear the version of yourself who never tried.