OmniBiz Africa

I remember reading this somewhere: “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” - Randy Pausch. Also, I was thinking about this recently after a conversation with my team this morning - I’ve realised most of what shaped me didn’t come from things going right. Not the obvious mistakes. The quieter ones that looked useful at the time. The ways of working that even felt responsible for a while, until I saw the cost of them. 💡One of the biggest was thinking I needed to stay close to everything. For a long time, I thought that was what leadership looked like. Stay in the middle, involved and informed. If I was close to every decision, every issue, every moving part, then I was adding value. But over time I realised something uncomfortable. I was not just staying close to the work. I was making too much of the work come through me. And when that happens, a team may still grow, but it does not move freely. People start waiting, ownership weakens and speed drops. You think you are helping, but slowly you become the point everything bends around. 💡The second mistake was more subtle. I confused energy with progress. There was a phase when everything around me felt alive- Too many ideas, moving parts, new initiatives constant activity and what not. It felt like growth. But it was not. When I really stepped back, I could see that we were spread too thin. We were doing more and growing less. A lot of effort was being spent, but not enough was picking up pace. That kind of mistake is dangerous because from the inside, it can look like ambition. But motion is not the same thing as growth. Both of those mistakes changed how I work. They made me think more seriously about where I am creating dependency, where I am mistaking noise for progress, and whether my presence is actually helping the team grow or just making me feel useful. And I think that is part of growing too. Not becoming perfect, just becoming more honest about the patterns that hold you back. Still learning. What is one mistake that changed how you work? #FounderLessons #GrowthThroughMistakes #HighPerformanceTeams #PersonalGrowth