At Amazon, one of their core leadership principles is "
Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit." The notion is that leaders are expected to respectfully call out and question decisions if they see a problem or disagree. It's only through challenging plans that those plans are broken down and rebuilt into ultimately successful plans.
The caveat to that: once a decision is made, even if you disagree with it, as a leader you're expected to commit to it and support it fully. Because a successful organization can't live with continual second-guessing from team members. You hash it out in the ring, no holds barred - then you get behind the winner and throw it your full support.
So far,
it's worked pretty well for them as a company.
In my career in various high-growth tech companies, from startups to multi-billion dollar orgs, the most successful ones I've worked for have each had some variation of this as a core value. A team has to operate as a team. Even investors understand this - and in spite of their loud voices (as people who are fronting the money), they're also part of a board and only guaranteed a proportional vote.
It's a shame to me that too many of our boosters appear to have never experienced this at an organization. There's a lot of hubris, which is fine (and expected amongst successfulk executives) - but there's also a lot of "I'll take my toys and go home." I get the impulse - as someone who's fronting a lot of money, you want to see results. But recognizing that even as a big donor, you're not the boss of the program, is a tough but necessary pill to swallow.
Getting boosters on that page was IMO the single best thing Nick Saban did at Alabama. I'm sad that CPJ didn't have that - but hopeful Batt is now making that happen at GT.
