Few business writers ask readers to sit with failure long enough to learn something specific from it. JP Conte does exactly that in a Forbes Business Council column examining how leaders relate to setbacks. He’s the founder and managing partner of his family office, Lupine Crest Capital, and his argument centers on a habit he considers teachable: separating the discomfort of being wrong from the usefulness of the information a mistake produces.
Conte’s premise starts with a common trap. Many leaders equate a failed initiative with a failure of judgment, which pushes them toward decisions that feel safe rather than decisions that are well-informed. He suggests that framing gets the relationship backward. A setback often confirms or corrects an assumption faster and more cheaply than months of additional analysis would have.
Separating the Sting From the Signal
The piece walks through how a leader might extract value from a decision that didn’t work out. Rather than asking whether the choice was a mistake, Conte recommends asking what the outcome reveals about a market, a customer, or a process. That shift in framing keeps a team focused on the next decision instead of relitigating the last one.
He connects this practice to disciplines built over decades of investing across different industries, where diversified ventures allow for calculated risks precisely because no single miss threatens the whole. A leader who spreads bets across several initiatives can afford to learn from a failed one without the entire cost being absorbed by the operation.
A Recommendation for Younger Leaders
Conte closes his reasoning with practical direction aimed at leaders earlier in their careers: practice on reversible decisions first, ones with fast feedback loops, before applying the same instincts to bigger and slower-moving bets. Building comfort with uncertainty in low-stakes settings, he argues, prepares a leader for the moments when the stakes are considerably higher.
Why Reversibility Matters More Than Size
A decision that can be undone carries a very different risk profile than one that can’t, even when the two look similar in scale. Conte’s column draws attention to that distinction because leaders often judge risk by dollar amount alone rather than by how easily a choice can be reversed if it goes wrong. A smaller, irreversible commitment can carry more real risk than a larger one built with an exit built in, and Conte suggests leaders sort their decisions by reversibility before they sort them by size.
Readers can find Conte’s full column, along with additional commentary on leadership and decision-making, through his Forbes Business Council author page and his personal website, both linked below.
