✍️ Editor's Note
I came to be an F1 fan in a rather unusual way. Back in April of 2022, during Covid, I found myself quarantined to my hotel room for days in Costa Rica. I was aware of F1 since two of my adult sons regularly discussed it during family gatherings. However, I did not understand the sport, how it worked, the teams, the drivers, or the strategies. Faced with nothing but time, I started watching the Netflix Series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive”, and I was hooked. Since then I try to watch as many of the races as possible, even at times when that means doing so at 3:00 AM because of where the race is taking place.
There are many incredible teams in F1, with many talented drivers. I became particularly fond of the Mercedes team, or more accurately, the “Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team” and one of its drivers at that time, Lewis Hamilton. To me there was a certain quality about him that set him apart from the other.
Before having tremendous success with team Mercedes with an astounding 84 top finishes, Lewis had taken 21 first place Grand Prix trophies while with team McLaren. This past weekend, he added to his incredible record by winning his first F1 Grand Prix since joining yet a third team, Ferrari
Following Lewis’ win on Sunday I came across an Instagram post by Danni Menzies that inspired me to write this article.
Everyone saw the Ferrari win. It was massive. People were genuinely emotional about it. I was scrolling through Instagram and caught a clip from Danni Menzies that framed the whole event in a way that hit me hard.
She pointed out the obvious thing we all ignored.
"We're all talking about Lewis Hamilton winning for Ferrari. I mean, that was emotional. But what I think is the most interesting part out of all of this, is that Lewis had to begin again, a new team, a new car."
She nailed the hard truth about success. People kept asking if Hamilton left it too late. They underestimated the sheer weight of walking away from guaranteed dominance. Being brilliant in one place builds a massive comfort zone. Stepping out of it requires your ego to survive being an absolute beginner.
Tech leaders get trapped in this exact cycle.
You spend years building out a network or establishing a stack. The exact quirks of the database become second nature. Suddenly you find yourself sitting around as the defacto expert with nothing new to learn.
I know that feeling intimately. I spent a long career as a School District Administrator and CTO. I knew every wire, every policy, and every vendor in the system. My reputation was solid.
Then I decided to completely forge a new path in the broader tech space.
It was brutal.
Walking away from that CTO title meant stripping off the armor I spent a decade building. I went from being the guy with all the answers to the rookie asking stupid questions about unfamiliar workflows. My ego took a beating for months.
Hamilton didn't just win a race. He proved adaptation is a muscle. You have to tear it to make it stronger.
We sit in our offices relying on old wins. Sticking with legacy software happens simply because we built it. That mindset has to die.
Here are five ways to force that change right now.
Break a working system. Pick a process you perfected years ago and scrap it. Force yourself to learn a completely unfamiliar architecture to rebuild it.
Relinquish the expert status. Sit in on a meeting about a framework you do not understand. Do not offer solutions. Just absorb the reality of not knowing.
Drop the old resume. Your past wins are irrelevant to tomorrow's problems. Treat your current role like you just got hired yesterday.
Pitch a project that terrifies you. Volunteer to lead an initiative outside your core competency. Let the fear of failure drive your research.
Kill the delay tactics. The market will never be perfectly stable. Stop waiting for the right quarter to make a massive shift.
Danni Menzies laid out the exact reality we need to accept.
"It's not too late to change teams, it's not too late to back yourself, and it's not too late to become uncomfortable again. Sometimes the next version of you doesn't arrive because life gets easier. It arrives because you're brave enough to start again."
Till next time,