I once interviewed a very impressive candidate for a product manager/owner role. This guy stood out from all the other candidates, he had a slick binder full of

I once interviewed a very impressive candidate for a product manager/owner role. This guy stood out from all the other candidates, he had a slick binder full of all his accomplishments and could talk about then at great length. I would have loved ro work with this guy. But, it became clear to me he’d never experienced failure, and so I asked about some of his professional set backs, and it was even clearer that he’d only ever worked on projects that were able to get a lot of support from management at companies with the resources to all but guarantee success. I ended up having to tell management he’d be a poor fit as a result. The position was one that was almost guaranteed failure at a company shrinking over 10% a year, that was unable to stop the old habits that were no longer working. We needed someone who could fail on an almost daily basis, yet still manage to salvage something from the position. I think we got lucky and found someone who did this, she was able to consistently interact with upper management, and understood that 1% improvements compounded to make a great product. Sadly, she eventually got beat down enough arguing with management to leave, but her presense was invaluable in creating the culture my team currently enjoys.