If somebody gave you an award for your biggest failure, would you go to the ceremony to accept? What would you do with the trophy?

At a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas earlier this month, CrowdStrike President Michael Sentonas took the stage to accept the “Most Epic Fail” award on behalf of his company. CrowdStrike became infamous in July for its role in a global IT meltdown that impacted a host of industries—but most notably commercial air travel, forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights.

“Definitely not the award to be proud of receiving,” Sentonas told the audience. “We got this horribly wrong.” He added that he intended to bring the “prize” back to the office. “I’m going back to headquarters and I’m going to take the trophy with me. It will be in a place of honor because I want every CrowdStriker who comes to work to see it,” he said.

It’s always a good gesture for a leader to acknowledge a mistake, especially an outsize one like CrowdStrike’s. (Though the company disputes some of the responsibility that airlines like Delta have ascribed to it.) Still, like a well-made strategic plan that just sits on a shelf, a “Most Epic Fail” award that does nothing more than ironically take up space in a trophy case is a wasted opportunity. 

It’s also a canny move for Sentonas to take the prize to the office, because it acknowledges that big mistakes are often made by teams. But leaders play a big role in the (dys)function of teams. So it’s important to not just show off the trophy—you have to talk about it.

In the latest Harvard Business Review, business researchers Thomas Keil and Marianna Zangrillo discuss three ways that leadership teams tend to break down. Teams can become what they call “shark tanks”—so hypercompetitive that infighting takes hold and key problems are neglected. They can become “petting zoos,” where teams are too timid to challenge each other and flag important issues. Or they can become “mediocracies,” so siloed and ill-equipped to handle bigger challenges that they’re all but doomed to fail.

You can’t just accept the trophy for your failure—you have to talk about it.

Those are distinct problems, but all three, they write, “can become a serious drag on strategy execution and erode morale.” Just as important, all three are ultimately the CEO’s responsibility, even if a key player in a drama was a particular shark or lamb. In all three cases, CEOs have failed to help set direction, soothe egos, stoke conversations, and generally ensure that teams have what they need to address issues before they become award-winning failures.

“It’s often a lack of clarity—strategic, operational, and behavioral—that paves the way for leadership-team dysfunction,” Keil and Zangrillo write. “Without clearly defined expectations, team members struggle to understand their roles and how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture.” It was an impressive gesture on Sentonas’ part to accept an embarrassment publicly and with good humor. The next step is to be candid about where the mistakes were made, not just in the particulars of the error but in the culture that created them. In that regard, the prize for failure belongs to Sentonas alone.

[iStock/erhui1979]