
- Start date
- Duration
- Format
- Language
- 04 Mar 2025
- 40 hours
- Online
- Italian
Gestire il prodotto in ogni fase del suo ciclo di vita, bilanciare le esigenze dei clienti e garantire la redditività aziendale.
A fascinating dichotomy comes to light in a study we conducted at SDA Bocconi’s Commercial Excellence Lab (CEL), in collaboration with ManagerItalia, regarding how sales managers perceive the factors driving their success versus the causes of their failures. Our research suggests that while individuals often attribute the former to personal skills and effort, they tend to ascribe the latter to external factors and circumstances.
Our study highlights that when asked about the keys to their success, managers frequently cite stable personal qualities, almost as though it all depends on possessing specific individual traits. Their answers are rich in nouns, emphasizing skills, attitudes, knowledge, and character traits (curiosity, perseverance, etc.). In contrast, when reflecting on their mistakes and lessons learned, managers focus more on external actions and factors, as well as company processes. Here, their language is marked by verbs, accentuating what they, their colleagues, or their organizations did or failed to do.
We explored managers’ perceptions of the key factors behind their professional success and the errors that have taught them the most. Building on a 2015 survey, we sought to identify the main drivers of success according to sales managers and the biggest mistakes they encountered, particularly in terms of lessons learned.
In our research, we used a mixed approach, combining software-based textual analysis with human interpretation, to analyze the responses to two open-ended questions from 503 managers (roughly evenly split among sales managers, CEOs, and managers from other functions):
"Reflecting on your work experience, what’s the secret to your success, past and/or present? Summarize in a paragraph of up to 100 words or five lines."
"What is the mistake (one that you made or that you saw others make) from which you’ve learned the most? Summarize in a paragraph of up to 100 words or five lines."
Our analysis revealed several intriguing insights:
Beyond the frequency of specific terms, our study offers three key recommendations for managers:
Foster adaptability: Training programs should emphasize adaptability, continuous learning, and openness to change.
Cultivate humility: Leaders should promote a culture of humility, encouraging individuals to challenge themselves, to learn from both successes and failures, and to value insights from more experienced and younger colleagues alike.
Promote data-driven decision-making: Encouraging managers to analyze successes and failures objectively (avoiding attributing outcomes solely to personal traits or external forces) can improve the organizational culture. While passion has faded, intuition is emerging as a way to reintroduce the human element into increasingly depersonalized workplaces. Managers, however, recognize the need to validate intuition with data and evidence.
One of the study's most critical insights revolves around how organizations handle mistakes. In collaborative environments open to dialogue, continuous learning becomes possible, with mistakes seen as an accepted—even encouraged—part of the process. In such settings, mistakes are not stigmatized or hidden but analyzed, understood, and shared. Conversely, in organizations where mistakes are penalized, companies risk repeating failures without ever learning from them.