Ibrahim Bashir argues that a company's success or failure isn't a reflection of any one leader's skill. He watched a former employer thrive while he was there, struggle after he left, then recover, showing how market forces and timing matter more than individual decisions.
We know that so much of success and failure is a point in time. And we know that so much of success and failure is sort of a team effort and not one person's decision. But I'll give you an example, you know, without naming any companies, I was at a company where after I had left, when I was there, the company was a bit of a darling and it was doing really, really well. And then at some point after I left, The company fell on hard times. If I was ever sort of talking to anybody about a role or advising, people would point at that company and they'd say, well, you know, they seem to be going in the wrong direction. When you were a product leader there, did you make decisions that led to what is now failure? And I thought it was funny because it was a little bit of trying to grade the test before it was complete, right? And, you know, I did my best to sort of tap dance around it and say like, time will tell. you know, these market dynamics are not sorted out in 1 or 2 quarters. And suffice it to say, the company is now doing really, really well and is considered a bit of a turnaround story. And now those same people are saying, man, those decisions you made several years ago are now really paying off. And, you know, the reality is when the company was doing well, I was not a genius product manager. When the company wasn't doing well, I wasn't a bozo product leader. It's the ebbs and flows and, you know, it's the market, it's user behavior, it's buyer behavior, it's investor behavior, it's expectations, it's macro conditions. There's so many things that go into what is successful and what is failure. And I think, you know, as a product leader, you don't make decisions that are about one week or one month or one quarter. You make decisions that really pan out over a long, long horizon.
