Crawl, Walk, Run: A Leadership Model

The best leaders I've worked with weren't in a hurry to have the answer. They were in a hurry to understand the problem.

That's a habit I've tried to carry throughout my career.

One thing I didn't appreciate early on is that experience has an order to it.

You don't skip straight to good judgment.

You earn it.

Experience Has a Sequence

Early in your career, you're focused on doing your own work well. You're checking calculations, reviewing drawings, solving technical problems, and trying not to miss anything.

That's exactly where you should be.

Over time, your perspective changes.

You stop seeing individual tasks and start seeing systems. A decision in electrical affects controls. Procurement affects construction. A small design change can ripple through fabrication, startup, and commissioning.

Most of the problems I've seen over the years weren't caused by one bad decision. They were caused by several reasonable decisions made without understanding how they affected one another.

That's a lesson you don't learn from a textbook.

You learn it because you've lived through enough projects to recognize the patterns.

That's the crawl.

Not because you're inexperienced.

Because you're building the foundation everything else depends on.

Walk: Responsibility With Someone Beside You

 

Walking is where growth really happens.

This is where I think organizations sometimes get it wrong.

Some believe leadership development means giving someone a title and hoping they figure it out.

I've never believed that.

I also don't agree with the idea that people should simply be thrown into the deep end because "that's how they'll learn." I've heard that for years. Sometimes people survive it. Sometimes they don't.

I'd rather invest a little more time helping someone understand why than spend months fixing problems that could have been avoided.

People grow when responsibility increases a little faster than comfort, but they still have someone close enough to ask questions, challenge assumptions, or help them see what they're missing.

That's not micromanagement.

That's coaching.

Some of the best lessons I learned came from people who didn't give me the answer. They asked one question that completely changed how I was looking at the problem.

Looking back, those conversations shaped my career.

That's why I still believe experience transfers best from person to person.

We've never had better software, modeling tools, or access to information than we do today.

All of that makes us more efficient.

None of it replaces experience.

Run: Build Leaders, Not Followers

Eventually, leadership stops being about your own work.

It's about everyone else's.

You're no longer trying to be the smartest engineer in the room.

You're trying to create an environment where mechanical, electrical, controls, procurement, fabrication, construction, and operations are all working toward the same objective.

That's the big picture.

Most people don't notice when it's working because everything simply moves forward.

When it's missing, everybody notices.

I've found people are willing to take on remarkably difficult projects when they know two things.

First, they'll have the support they need when things get difficult.

Second, if something goes wrong, the first question won't be, "Who do we blame?"

It'll be, "What did we learn?"

There's a big difference.

I don't expect people to never make mistakes.

I expect them to learn from them.

If someone makes a thoughtful decision with the information they had, we'll figure it out together.

If people are afraid of making mistakes, they stop making decisions altogether.

That doesn't create better leaders.

It creates hesitation.

Then You Crawl Again

One thing I didn't expect when I was younger is that you never really stop crawling.

Every time you take on a different type of project...

Every time new technology changes the way you've always done something...

Every time you move into unfamiliar territory...

You start over.

Not from scratch.

But from a place of learning.

The people I've respected most over the years were never afraid to admit they needed more information before making a decision.

Some people mistake that for uncertainty.

I think it's experience.

I've been doing this long enough to know I don't have all the answers.

What experience has given me is a better idea of which questions to ask before making a decision.

What I Hope People Remember

When people ask why our teams stay together or why they're willing to tackle difficult projects, I don't think it's because we hire different kinds of people.

It's because we try to build an environment where people can grow.

They know they'll be challenged.

They know quality matters.

They know they'll be expected to think.

And they know that when something doesn't go as planned, we'll spend more time understanding why than looking for someone to blame.

That doesn't lower accountability.

It raises it.

Because once people understand the "why," they usually don't make the same mistake twice.

Crawl. Walk. Run.

After thirty-five years, I still believe those three words describe good leadership better than anything else I've come across.

You crawl by learning the fundamentals and understanding why things work the way they do.

You walk by taking on responsibility with people around you who are willing to teach, challenge, and support you.

You run by helping someone else do the same.

Then, sooner or later, you find yourself back at the beginning because there's always another challenge, another technology, another opportunity to learn.

I've never seen that as starting over.

I've always seen it as part of becoming better.