I watched in awe at the live stream of Crew Dragon lifting off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Last Saturday was the first time a private company sent humans into space. This alone is an astonishing fact which could fill a blog post, but today I’m going to focus on one of Elon’s statements before launch.
“I’m the chief engineer of this thing, so I’d just like to say that if it goes right, it’s credit to the SpaceX-NASA team. If it goes wrong, it’s my fault.”
I love this quote, and here’s why:
- He made it public. Elon didn’t just think it, or say it in private, he publicly admitted that success would be because of the team, and failure would be his alone to bear.
- He took accountability before the event occurred. It’s easy for leaders to hope for the best, and respond after the event—to claim glory in success, or deflect responsibility in failure.
- He deferred credit, and accepted all risk.This equation is rarely seen in business or leadership.
- He spoke plainly and clearly. There was no, “We’re taking all precautions and successful mission completion will be due to a vast array of talented people, and we’ve minimised the risk of failure through blah blah blah.” No, he just said, “If things go right, the team gets credit. If it goes wrong, it’s on me.”
Believe it or not, I don’t usually go gaga for Elon.
He’s a polarising leader whose missteps and tweets have wiped billions of dollars of value off his companies, but this moment on Saturday was true leadership.
For all the bluster and talk, he backs it up. He led the first launch of humans into space by a private company and was the Chief Designer on the project.
But in addition to the technical and commercial brilliance required to pull off such a feat, he also took massive ownership.
And I love that.