In 2000, Blockbuster’s leadership team had a meeting that would go down in business history as one of the most expensive examples of righteousness ever. Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph flew to Dallas to pitch a partnership to Blockbuster CEO John Antioco. Netflix was struggling – they were losing money, had only 300,000 subscribers, and were desperate. They offered to sell Netflix to Blockbuster for $50 million and run Blockbuster’s online division.

The Blockbuster executives literally laughed them out of the room. Why? Because they were “right.” They had 9,000 stores, 60 million customers, and $6 billion in revenue. They were the undisputed kings of home entertainment. These Netflix guys with their silly mail-order DVD service? Please. Blockbuster’s leadership was so committed to being right about their existing model that they couldn’t see the future coming. They were so attached to their righteousness – “We’re the biggest, we’re the best, we know this industry” – that they missed the greatest opportunity in entertainment history. By 2010, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Netflix, the company they could have bought for $50 million, was worth $13 billion.

The Blockbuster executives were technically “right” in 2000 – they were bigger, more profitable, and had more customers. But their need to be right, their attachment to their existing success, their inability to be wrong about their core assumptions, killed them.

Being right is killing your momentum and sucking joy out of your life

This is true for all of us in varying magnitudes: you’re so terrified of being wrong that you’ve turned your entire leadership style into one giant hedge bet. And it’s slowly destroying or slowing down everything you’re trying to build. I see it everywhere. In boardrooms where leaders speak in corporate-speak instead of taking clear positions. In strategy meetings where everyone’s “testing the waters” instead of making bold calls. In conversations where executives say things like “we’ll see how it goes” or “let’s wait and see what the data shows” when what their company actually needs is someone to plant their flag and say “this is what we’re doing.”

This is a human epidemic. We live in a world where people are literally willing to get fired, resign from prestigious positions, lose promotions they’ve worked decades for, go to war, and even commit acts of violence – all to protect their righteousness and avoid looking wrong. It goes deeper than business. Look at the political landscape – politicians destroying their careers rather than admitting they were wrong about a policy. Look at international relations – nations sending their young people to die rather than backing down from a position. Look at corporate scandals where executives double down on obviously failing strategies because admitting error feels like death.

Think about that for a moment. Our beings are so fragile, our egos so brittle, that we’ll sacrifice our happiness, our relationships, our success, even our lives, just to avoid the temporary discomfort of being incorrect about something. It’s not being strategic. It’s cowardice dressed up in business casual, and it’s the same cowardice that’s tearing apart families, organisations, and entire countries.

The Global Pandemic of Fake Righteousness

Here’s what’s absolutely insane: we’d rather be right than happy. We’d rather be right than successful. We’d rather be right than loved. Left to our own devices, most of us would choose the bitter satisfaction of righteousness over the joy of actually getting what we want in life. And the most tragic part? Half the time, we’re not even right. We’re just committed to a position we took years ago that we can’t let go of because our entire identity has become wrapped up in it.

I’ve watched CEOs tank their companies rather than admit their strategic vision was flawed. I’ve seen leaders in every industry – from tech to healthcare to government – choose career suicide over the simple phrase “I was wrong, let’s try something different.” We’ve created a world where being wrong is treated like a moral failing instead of what it actually is: information. Valuable, necessary information that helps us course-correct and improve.

You are addicted to appearing certain

Most people think certainty means you have to be right all the time. So they hedge. They qualify. They create escape routes in every sentence they speak (so that they can never be proven wrong). “Well, if the market conditions remain favourable…” “Assuming our projections are accurate…” “We’re cautiously optimistic that…” This hedging isn’t just killing your business momentum – it’s killing your soul. Every time you refuse to take a stand, every time you speak in maybes and possibles, you’re slowly dying inside. Because deep down, you know you’re capable of so much more than this watered-down, committee-approved version of leadership.

Certainty isn’t about being right. It’s about taking a position and moving powerfully from that place. Certainty is about taking action and making shit happen – and being willing to be proven wrong – because life is (drumrolls for dramatic effect) uncertain. You’re so busy protecting yourself from the possibility of being wrong that you never fully commit to anything. And uncommitted leadership? That’s not leadership at all.

When I speak, being certain or not is in my control. What is not in my control is whether I will be right or wrong about what I am certain about. That is the domain of God and above my pay grade, so I do not concern myself with being right or wrong. When I commit to something, I am certain it will happen and everything I say or do comes from that place of certainty.

Having said that, I will see if I am right or wrong about that. And after spending a lifetime wanting to be right and never wrong, today I have stopped hedging my certainty for being right or to avoid being wrong. I am willing to be wrong. I am not willing to live life while being uncertain because I have seen the other side and decided it’s not worth playing life that way.

Once you see life in both these dimensions – certain/uncertain and right/wrong – you will also see where wanting to be right is taking away your ability to be certain in your speaking and actions today. And that is making you play safe, small, not giving your best, not enjoying life, and paradoxically, even limiting or delaying the results you actually want and desire.

Your Need to Be Right Is Costing You Everything

Let’s get brutally honest about what this addiction to being right is actually costing you – because it’s not just professional, it’s existential:

• Your team’s respect. They can smell your uncertainty from a mile away. When you hedge every decision, speak in maybes, and constantly cover your bases, your people lose confidence in your ability to lead them anywhere worth going. They’d rather follow someone who’s wrong occasionally but decisive than someone who’s never wrong because they never actually say anything.
• Your company’s momentum. Momentum requires decisive action. When you’re always waiting for more data, more proof, more certainty that you’ll be right, opportunities slip by. Your competitors – the ones willing to be wrong sometimes – are eating your lunch while you’re still in analysis paralysis.
• Your own joy and aliveness. Think about the last time you felt truly alive as a leader. I bet it wasn’t during a meeting where you carefully managed everyone’s expectations. It was probably when you took a bold stand, made a big bet, or fought for something you believed in. That’s what certainty feels like – and you’ve been starving yourself of it.
• Your capacity to inspire. People don’t follow hedged bets. They follow vision, conviction, and leaders who are willing to put their reputation on the line for something bigger than themselves. When you’re more committed to being right than being powerful, you become utterly uninspiring.
• Your relationships. This doesn’t stop at work. How many marriages have been destroyed by the need to be right? How many friendships have ended because someone couldn’t just say “you know what, I was wrong about that”? Our addiction to righteousness is literally destroying our capacity for love and connection.

The Cost of Our Fragile Beings

This isn’t strength. This is the ultimate fragility – beings so terrified of being seen as fallible that they’ll sacrifice everything real and meaningful to maintain the illusion of infallibility.

John McEnroe was a tennis genius, a player of sublime touch and creativity. But he was equally famous for being pathologically addicted to being right. For McEnroe, every line call he disagreed with wasn’t a judgment call—it was an obvious error by an incompetent official. This conviction fueled his legendary on-court tantrums. His cry of “You cannot be serious!” to an umpire at Wimbledon in 1981 became his global catchphrase.

Throughout his career, he refused to accept an official’s verdict if it contradicted his own. He was so certain of his own perception that he couldn’t mentally proceed until he had raged against the injustice of being proven “wrong.” He berated umpires, smashed rackets, and argued endlessly, believing he was the sole arbiter of truth on the court. The Damage: McEnroe’s addiction to being right cost him dearly. His tirades led to countless point penalties, game penalties, and fines that lost him momentum and matches at crucial moments. Most famously, it led to him being defaulted from the 1990 Australian Open, a Grand Slam he had a real chance of winning.

The Hedge Fund Life (And Why It’s Killing You)

You know what a hedge fund is? It’s a financial instrument that pays off when everyone else is wrong. It’s literally designed to profit from other people’s failures.

And that’s exactly how most leaders are living their lives – like one big hedge fund. Always positioning themselves to be able to say “I told you so” if things go south, always creating plausible deniability, always having an out. If you only said: “I will try”; then you can always come back and say: “I said I would try. I did. What else can I do?” This keeps you free from being wrong and also deprives you of your full potential.

But here’s the thing about hedge fund thinking: it might protect you from being spectacularly wrong, but it also prevents you from being spectacularly right. It keeps you playing small, playing safe, playing not to lose instead of playing to win. People need a leader who’s willing to be wrong in service of something greater. They need someone who values progress over perfection, results over righteousness.

The Courage to Be Wrong in Service of Being Powerful

I’m not suggesting you become reckless or stop using your brain. I’m suggesting something far more radical: that you become willing to be wrong in service of being powerful. This is perhaps the most counterintuitive leadership principle of all time, but it’s also the most liberating. When you’re willing to be wrong, you can:

• Make decisions faster while others are still gathering data
• Communicate with clarity and conviction instead of corporate speak
• Inspire others to follow your vision instead of your hedge bets
• Take the risks that create breakthrough results
• Learn and adapt quickly when things don’t go as planned
• Actually enjoy the process of building something instead of constantly protecting yourself

The best leaders I know aren’t right more often than everyone else. They’re just more willing to be wrong, which paradoxically makes them more powerful and, ultimately, more successful. They’ve learned that being wrong occasionally is the price of admission to playing a big game. And they’ve decided that price is worth paying.

What Your Team Actually Needs From You

Your team doesn’t need you to be right all the time. They need you to be certain about the direction you’re going, even when you don’t know exactly how you’ll get there.

They need you to say things like:

• “This is what we’re doing.”
• “I’m confident we’ll figure it out.”
• “We’re going to make this work.”
• “I believe in this vision completely.”

Not because you have a crystal ball, but because someone has to plant the flag. Someone has to say “we’re going this way” so everyone else can stop looking around wondering what the plan is. Your people are drowning in uncertainty. They don’t need more analysis or more hedging. They need someone willing to take a stand, point in a direction, and say “follow me” – even if there’s a chance that direction might need to change later.

The Daily Practice of Certainty

So how do you break this addiction to being right and start living from certainty? Start small, but start today:

• In your next meeting, instead of saying “I think maybe we should consider…” try “Here’s what we’re going to do…”
• When someone asks for your opinion, give it without hedging. Not “Well, there are pros and cons to both approaches…” but “My recommendation is X because…”
• In your personal life, practice certainty in low-stakes situations. “It’s going to be a great day.” “We’ll get a good table at the restaurant.” “This project is going to work out perfectly.”
• With your team, communicate vision and direction as certainties, not possibilities. Instead of “If everything goes according to plan, we might be able to…” try “When we achieve this goal…”
• When you’re wrong, practice saying “I was wrong about that” without immediately explaining why you were wrong or how it wasn’t really your fault. Just own it, learn from it, and move on.

The Liberation of Letting Go

Here’s what happens when you stop needing to be right all the time: you become free. Free to take bigger swings. Free to communicate with power and conviction. Free to inspire others. Free to fail spectacularly and learn rapidly. Free to change your mind when new information comes in. Free to be human.

You know what the most successful entrepreneurs and CEOs have in common? They’ve all been wrong. A lot. Publicly. Expensively. And they kept going anyway. Jeff Bezos was wrong about the Fire Phone. Steve Jobs was wrong about the Lisa computer. Elon Musk has been wrong about Tesla production timelines approximately 47,000 times. But they’re all still willing to make bold predictions and take big stands.

Because they understand that being wrong occasionally is the price of admission to playing a big game. And playing it safe? That’s not safety – that’s just a slow death.

Your Challenge

Here’s your challenge for the next 30 days: Practice showing up with certainty in at least one interaction every day. And when you’re wrong – because you will be sometimes – practice taking that with grace and moving on. Don’t let the fear of those moments keep you from the power and joy that comes from living with certainty. Your team needs someone with conviction, not someone who’s always covering their bases. And you deserve to experience the aliveness that comes from playing full out, even when you can’t guarantee the outcome. Stop saving your certainty for when you know you’ll be right. By then, it’s too late. The opportunity, the moment, the chance to lead – it’s now.

The world is waiting for what you have to offer. It requires you to offer it with certainty, not hesitation. It requires leaders who are more committed to creating results than protecting their image. It needs people who would rather be happy than right, successful than righteous, powerful than perfect. Your being is not as fragile as you think. You can survive being wrong.

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