First things first—I have no idea if this quote is real or if it is some mashup derived from my life, history, or if I just imagined it:

“Anyone can drive a car at 200mph in a straight line, it is going around the corners that is the hard part”

—Nigel Mansell (maybe).

Whenever I repeat this, possibly dubiously sourced, quote to anyone it is always followed by what I consider is a real world example of this applied to a leadership situation.

When working in digital premedia as a production lead in a proofing area I was asked by another production lead (let’s call him Scott) if the 30 pages sitting in our inbox were going to make it to the FedEx delivery in an hour. We were proofing (basically printing) the pages on 2 Kodak Approvals (a $250K machine with lots of lasers that made a very color accurate image) and I pointed out that we could run 4 pages per “flat” and that each machine took 20 minutes to run one flat.

I casually asked him which 6 of the 30 pages he would prefer to miss shipment (you did the math too right?)

Scott wasn’t happy.

He very carefully explained the issue again—all the pages in these bags (the large folders we moved work around in) needed to be shipped via the next FedEx pickup in about an hour.

I in turn explained that it was not physically possible given the time and the equipment we were working with.

Scott then countered by telling me that it was his job to make sure that those proofs were shipped.

It was at this point that I had a realization and before I knew it I had said it out loud:

“Actually it isn’t your job. If we can do all the work in the bin we don’t need you to tell us anything, we’ll just do it. Your job is to decide what we don’t do when we can’t get it done”.

Scott went very red, threw his arms up and left. In the years since I have plumbed that particular encounter for many lessons—and in case you need completion on the actual story—we did them in a first in first out order and the ones that arrived (or were stacked) later in the pile shipped the next day.

So as I collect my thoughts to write this, the most striking thing is how badly the original cute opening “quote” actually works as an analog here.

Is it true that when somebody repeats a premise or situation that you clearly understand back to you with nothing new added that they are probably at the limits of their abilities or current capacity? Yes, of course, and the good lesson to learn is to regroup or let them throw their arms up and walk away.

Is it true that you should ignore people directly telling you what their job is—or more specifically what it is supposed to achieve—because it often amounts to a person asking you to take that responsibility on yourself rather than them helping facilitate that? Absolutely it is, or again perhaps it is a sign that they are out of ideas for solving this particular problem.

Is it also true that expending energy on something that has already gone wrong or caused an issue that is for all intents and purposes insurmountable is something we should avoid. Of course, but this is also where our cute analog starts to break down.

There are two things happening here, the first is that if the problem (or the curve) is insurmountable, then expending energy even if only in stress and anxiety will not help or solve it.

The second, and this is where our analog breaks down, is that this problem likely arose because of an issue that the person—Scott in this case—was actually responsible for (ie: they had control over). It was their area, leadership, processes, and people that had delivered this work to my area (of responsibility) this “late”.

So if I had been as aware as I am now what I might have told Scott his job was: “No, your job is to help build an environment for the people you are leading that minimizes the occurrences of this happening wherever possible. Then, if it does happen you should calmly help those around you determine what the best failure outcome looks like while taking that responsibility from them so they can still perform their best”.

I suspect that if I had said that I would have been greeted with the same thrown up hands and red face but at least I would have had this realization: in a leadership situation—as it relates to our opening quote—you are not really responsible for driving the car but in fact, you are responsible for building the track.

Once we understand this as a leader we can make whole new quote:

“Anyone can drive a car at 200mph in a straight line so a great track designer can turn anyone into Nigel Mansell?”

—Me (just now).

So it might not be as cool as the original, and while your mileage (pun intended) on the advice given in it may vary, at least we know who definitely wrote this one.