But I learned something else along the way, too: Excellence and fairness don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I wouldn’t have articulated it that way at the time. Mostly I was just focused on doing my job well and certainly wasn’t thinking about what I’d do differently if I were in Roone’s shoes. But years later, when I was given the chance to lead, I was instinctively aware of both the need to strive for perfection and the pitfalls of caring only about the product and never the people.
