Nehaveigur

Responsibility is a unique concept… You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you… If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

Hyman Rickover

Do you like poker but you keep losing? I do.

In poker, there’s a dealer button that goes around. If you have the button, it means you’re the one who deals the cards. The dealer button is also called the buck. On the American Frontier, buttons weren’t macho enough. Instead, they used a buck knife.

Passing the buck literally means that you don’t want to deal and instead you pass the buck, and therefore the responsibility for dealing, on to the next player. It’s an expression you’ve probably heard before. It’s also used outside of poker where it means blaming everybody but yourself when things go wrong. Basically, being the opposite of a leader.

Consider Jimmy Carter. Great man, not-so-great president, they say. During his time in the White House, he had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read The buck stops here. He had inherited the sign from Harry Truman. What both presidents wanted to signal was that they are the decision makers and that the responsibility is theirs and theirs alone.

That’s a good definition of a leader: Someone who takes responsibility., especially for all the bad stuff that happens. Nobody needs to be told to take responsibility for the good stuff.

In the 1950s, when Carter was still a young man and years before he became president, he wanted to join the nuclear submarine program of the U.S. navy. The leader of the program at the time was admiral Hyman Rickover. There are all sorts of terrible accidents that can happen with nuclear reactors and with submarine. You want someone tough to be in charge, and Rickover head a reputation for being incredibly tough on himself and on everyone else.

The story Carter tells of Rickover is my favorite story about leadership. Carter had applied for a job in the nuclear submarine program, and Rickover interviewed him. Carter wasn’t even 30 years old and had just graduated from the Naval Academy. Rickover was already famous as the head of the program and he was notorious for being a demanding boss. The two had never met before.

The interview lasted for more than two hours. In the beginning, Rickover let Carter choose the topics. Of course, Carter picked the topics he knew about best. Rickover never smiled. He stared Carter right in the eyes. He started asking easy questions and then kept asking more and more difficult ones. After some time, it became clear to Carter that he knew less about each of those topics than he thought he did. Soon, he was drenched in cold sweat.

At the end of the interview, Rickover asked Carter how well he did at the Naval Academy. Carter was relieved. He had graduated 59th in a class of more than 800. He was proud of this and that’s what he told Rickover. He then waited for Rickover to congratulate him. Instead Rickover asked, did you do your best?

Carter’s first instinct was of course to answer, Yes, Sir! This was a job interview, after all. But then he thought about it some more. He remembered all the times when he could’ve studied a little harder, put in a little more effort, spent a little more time reading. So instead, he answered, No Sir, I didn’t always do my best.

That was an honest answer. But was it a smart answer? It was, because Carter got the job. He later said that besides his parents, Rickover was the biggest influence on him.

I don’t think that this is a good way to conduct a job interview, but there are three things I like about this story.

First, the question. Did you do your best? It’s something we will all ask ourselves in the end. Second, I like Carter’s reply. He wanted to give an honest answer, and I don’t think the honest answer to this question can always or maybe ever be an unambiguous yes. Third, I like that Rickover hired Carter despite his answer. Or more likely, because of his answer. Rickover knew that the easy thing to do during an interview is to exaggerate. To bend the truth. To not admit to any big faults. It takes someone of great character to admit that they did not do their best and it takes someone with great insight to appreciate this character.