Detach, Experiment, Improve: The Mindset of Exceptional Leaders

What makes a great leader? Yes, great leaders work hard. Yes, they use their strengths well. But the standout trait? They know how to detach from the result and stay curious about what created it.

Great leaders don’t get bogged down in whether an outcome was a success or a failure. Instead, they approach it like a science experiment. They analyse the system, test hypotheses, identify what works, lock it in, and keep evolving.

Chris references Russell Ackoff’s perspective that a system is not the sum of its parts, but the product of their interactions, and draws on Dr Jason Fox’s idea that there’s no such thing as failure – only a disproved hypothesis.

If you’re constantly reacting to outcomes instead of engineering them, this episode will shift how you think about leadership and drive continuous improvement.