Precisely when the numbers are good and the decisions prove themselves, it is easy for a manager to confuse contribution with ownership. The commandment of the first fruits offers a different way to tell the story of success — one that leaves room for pride, but also for people, circumstances and the new responsibility that success creates.
Success is a dangerous condition for managers. Not because it should be feared, but because it changes the way we tell ourselves the story. The plan worked, the customers came, the company grew and a decision we made turned out to be right. Almost without noticing, the sentence “we succeeded” can become “I did this.”
Most managers know that failure requires self-examination. It is far less obvious to us that success requires it too.
The Torah portion Ki Tavo opens with the commandment of the first fruits. The farmer comes to the Temple with the first fruits of his land. Behind them are months of plowing, sowing, tending, waiting and risk. If there is anyone who can tell himself that the fruit is the result of his work, it is the farmer now standing before the harvest.
Yet precisely at the moment of triumph, the Torah asks him to stop. He does not simply bring the fruit and make do with a brief expression of thanks. He must tell an entire story: “A wandering Aramean was my father,” the descent into Egypt, the enslavement, the exodus and the arrival in the land. Instead of beginning with himself and his diligence, he is required to place his success within a continuum larger than himself.
Rabbi Isaac Arama, author of "Akedat Yitzhak", sees the commandment of the first fruits as an answer to the familiar danger of “my power and the might of my hand.” A person acted, worked and made an effort, but the ritual requires him to remember that the land, the ability, the opportunity and the circumstances did not begin with him.
This is not a call to erase human achievement. The farmer did indeed plow and sow. A CEO did indeed build a team, make decisions and take risks. The question is not whether we contributed to the success, but what our contribution actually means.
There is a great difference between saying, “I was a significant factor in the success,” and saying, “I am the reason it happened.”
The business world loves founder stories. A person identifies an opportunity others missed, builds a company with his own two hands and leads it to success. The story is inspiring, but almost always incomplete.
Most managers know that failure requires self-examination. It is far less obvious to us that success requires it too
Behind every success are talented employees, partners, customers who placed their trust in the company, capital, market conditions, knowledge accumulated over years and sometimes luck as well. Even the abilities a manager attributes to himself were not created in a vacuum. Someone taught him, opened a door for him, believed in him or allowed him to make mistakes without paying the full price.
When a manager erases all those factors from the story of success, the problem is not only a lack of gratitude. A managerial risk begins to emerge.
If success is proof that I was right, criticism may be perceived as a threat. If the victory belongs to me, the people around me gradually shift from being those who created it with me to those who are expected to validate my story. In this way, past success can turn into a false sense of immunity: I was right then, so I am probably seeing things correctly now too.
But reality owes nothing to our previous successes.
There is an interesting echo here as well of the philosophical tradition in which Jewish thinkers of the Middle Ages operated. Al-Ghazali, who had a significant influence on Jewish philosophical discourse, repeatedly addressed the tension between human action and the tendency to attribute full control over outcomes to oneself. A person is obligated to act, think and make an effort, but the greater the success, the greater the danger of confusing being a significant actor with being the sole source of the result.
That is exactly the point the commandment of the first fruits seeks to restrain: not the action itself, but the interpretation we give it.
Humility also can go wrong
We all know the manager who, in a management meeting, repeatedly says: “I did it,” “I decided,” “I brought it in.” It grates, and more importantly, it diminishes the people who made the success possible.
But I have also encountered the opposite. A manager who tries so hard to be modest that he explains he had almost nothing to do with the outcome. That is not necessarily leadership either. At times he comes across less as a manager and more as someone around whom events simply happened.
Leadership requires proportion. A manager needs to take responsibility for what he did, for better or worse. He needs to know how to explain the decisions he made and his contribution to the outcome, while at the same time giving others their real share of the success.
That may be the precise managerial meaning of the first fruits. The farmer does not arrive with an empty basket to prove that he is humble. He brings the fruit he himself grew. He simply does not tell himself that it came into being because of him alone.
From here comes the shift from a consciousness of ownership to a consciousness of responsibility.
One can think about an organization, money, authority and power through the concept of ownership: this is my business, my achievement, my people. Or one can think about them through the concept of responsibility: resources, people and influence have been entrusted to me, and now I have a duty to use them properly.
A manager needs to know how to explain the decisions he made and his contribution to the outcome, while at the same time giving others their real share of the success.
An ownership mindset asks who gets the credit. A responsibility mindset asks what should now be done with what we have managed to build.
That gap becomes especially important as the organization becomes more successful. A manager has more money to allocate, more people affected by his decisions and more ability to shape the environment. Success therefore does not reduce the duty of self-examination. It increases it.
An interesting example comes from the Fox Group. The group, led by Harel Wiesel, ended the second quarter with revenue of about 1.8 billion shekels and net profit of 123 million shekels. Alongside the strong results, Wiesel also addressed activities that still require improvement, strategy vis-à-vis competitors and the considerations behind distributing a dividend of only 150 million shekels despite a much larger cash balance.
In my view, it is precisely in a strong quarter that a manager is tested on whether he is still capable of seeing what is not working. When everything looks good, it is easier to silence warning signs. A mature manager must be able to hold two truths in the same room: we are succeeding, and we still have things to fix.
The commandment of the first fruits essentially offers a managerial ritual that can be adopted even without a basket of fruit. After a deal, a launch, an exit or a successful quarter, before rushing immediately toward the next target, it is worth stopping and telling the full story.
Who made this success possible? Which employee did critical work that was almost invisible? What depended on our decisions and what depended on market conditions? Which assumptions proved correct, and which things simply worked out in our favor? And what new responsibility has now been created by the success?
There is no artificial humility here. A leader does not need to pretend he did not contribute. He needs to know how to bring his first fruits with pride, without forgetting that the entire field did not begin with him.
(Generated using ChatGPT)
A tool for managers: The first-fruits test
After a significant success, before moving on to the next goal, it is worth holding a brief discussion around four questions:
- What did we actually do right? Identify the decisions and actions that contributed to the success without minimizing them.
- Who else made the success possible? Employees, partners, customers, circumstances and opportunities that were not created by us alone.
- What about this success could mislead us? What dangerous conclusion might we draw simply because this time we succeeded?
- What new responsibility has been created? How should the capital, trust, status or power we have gained influence the next decision?
The true test of a manager is not only how he behaves when the ground gives way beneath his feet, but also what he does when it bears fruit.
A great manager is not one who says, “It is all because of me,” nor one who erases his own role in order to appear humble. He knows how to take responsibility for his contribution, give others their share and understand that his success does not give him ownership over the future.
Because perhaps the greatest danger in success is not that we will want more of it. The danger is that we will begin to believe it proves that we are its source.