When a company succeeds, we look for a hero. When it fails, we look for someone to blame. It seems easier for us to understand reality through one person than through an entire system of factors, decisions and circumstances. Success gets a face, failure gets an address, and the story becomes simple, clear and, above all, easy to digest.
But reality is far more complex.
Ziv Elul - Chukat Torah portion
Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, author of Akedat Yitzchak, identifies in the story of Korach a particularly deep human phenomenon. According to him, a significant part of the opposition to Moses did not stem only from disagreement with his path, but from a mistaken perception of the very nature of his leadership. There were those who struggled to see him as the emissary of an idea greater than himself, and therefore interpreted his success as the result of personal talent, charisma or political sophistication.
Once that suspicion was created, every event became further proof:
No water? Moses is to blame.
A difficult journey? Moses is to blame.
Another crisis? Here is more proof.
Reality itself was no longer at the center. Suspicion became the lens through which reality was interpreted.
Rabbi Yitzchak Arama teaches an important principle here: When people stop seeing the system, they begin to see only the figures within it. Instead of understanding processes, they look for heroes. Instead of analyzing circumstances, they look for someone to blame.
This phenomenon does not belong only to the desert. It is alive and well in the modern management world as well.
When a new CEO takes office, employees, investors and the media often attribute almost mystical abilities to him. If the stock rises, he is a genius. If it falls, he is a failure. If the market shifts in his favor, the credit is recorded in his name. If a global crisis occurs, he too is expected to be held accountable.
This tendency is understandable, but it is also dangerous.
It causes organizations to attribute to one person successes that were built over years by hundreds of employees, and on the other hand to place on him responsibility for processes that no single person could ever control alone.
The philosopher David Hume pointed already in the 18th century to the human tendency to look for one clear cause even when reality is far more complex. In the 20th century, psychologists expanded the idea within what is known as the “fundamental attribution error,” the tendency to explain successes and failures through a person’s character rather than through the circumstances, system and context in which he operated.
This is exactly Rabbi Yitzchak Arama’s insight. When people lose the ability to see a system, they begin to see only figures. And when that happens, the leader becomes both an idol and a scapegoat at the same time.
I clearly remember my own transition to managing a public company. At the beginning, it is very easy to think that the CEO must have all the answers. Over time, I understood that my chances of succeeding alone were close to zero. One of the most important decisions I made was to build around me a strong, experienced and diverse management team, people who had already gone through similar journeys, managed public companies, dealt with crises, met investors and led large organizations.
I was not looking for people who would reinforce my opinion. I was looking for people who could challenge it.
In retrospect, a large part of the successes attributed to the CEO were actually the result of a high-quality group of people making good decisions together. That may be less glamorous than a story about a single leader, but it is much closer to the truth.
The same phenomenon can also be seen in real time in financial markets. This week, Elon Musk’s SpaceX once again stood at the center of investors’ attention, after transactions were carried out at a valuation of about $400 billion, a valuation that continued to climb and gave the company a significant jump compared with previous estimates. Immediately, the familiar narrative returned: Elon Musk did it again.
But here too, it is easier to tell a story about one person than to understand the entire system. SpaceX is the result of thousands of employees, engineers, managers, business partners, government contracts, technological innovation, managerial daring and execution ability built over more than two decades. Musk is undoubtedly a central figure in the story, but he is not the entire story. When a company succeeds, the human tendency is to attribute the success to one person; when it fails, to look for that same person in order to place the blame. Reality, almost always, is more complex.
Perhaps that is also why we are so drawn to stories about single leaders. It is easier to believe that one person is responsible for success or failure than to deal with the complexity of systems, teams and organizational cultures. But reality is usually deeper. It requires us to remove layers of assumptions, ego and images, and to try to see things as they truly are.
In one of the songs I wrote, “Without Masks,” the following lines appear:
“Without masks I call to You,
lifting my eyes as I am.
Without masks I call to You,
and there they do not judge, they only listen.”
In a sense, this is also the challenge of leadership. To remove the masks we place on people, on organizations and on reality itself. To listen before judging, to understand before blaming, and to remember that not every success is born from one person, and not every failure belongs to him alone.
Great leaders understand this danger. They do not build an organization that revolves around their charisma, but an organization capable of existing even without them. They cultivate broad leadership, build strong mechanisms, encourage decentralized decision-making and develop a culture that does not depend on one person alone.
Perhaps this is one of the most important managerial lessons that emerges from Rabbi Yitzchak Arama’s words. Leadership is not the ability to make people believe that you are the reason for every success. Leadership is the ability to build a system that succeeds even when the credit is shared by many. A healthy organization does not rest on one person, but on culture, values, people and a sense of shared mission. The stronger the system, the less dependent it is on a single hero.
Ultimately, the true test of a leader is not how much light is directed at him, but how much light continues to shine even when he moves aside. Great leaders do not build dependence on themselves; they build people, management teams and organizations capable of succeeding even on the day they are no longer at center stage. That is the difference between someone who leads a story and someone who builds a legacy.