Lead the Team (Top 2% of Podcasts)
Aug 23, 2026 · 42 min · 12 segments
What do you do when you inherit a problem everyone else has given up on? Before helping build **Grafana Labs** into one of the world's leading infrastructure software companies, **Anthony Woods**…
Anthony WoodsGuestBen FanningHostIf you could go back and have one conversation with your younger self at the very beginning of Grafana's journey, what would you tell him that would save him the most stress, frustration, and wasted energy?
I mean, I, I really struggle to, uh, to come up with answers for this because, you know, one of the things, uh, they find very easy is like, you know, we've obviously had a huge amount of success, right.
Um, you know, there's been mistakes, you know, there's been tough times, but, um, they're all great learning opportunities.
Um, and so, you know, the thing that I always kind of think of is like, I wouldn't go and change anything, right.
You know, I don't want to go back and tell myself not to go and do something and then miss out on an opportunity to learn something that, you know, was really critical to the journey that we've been on.
So, you know, certainly for me, you know, I just like to embrace, you know, the past.
And that's certainly, you know, because I know people ask me this question and really what they're looking for is like, what should I do, right? And really my advice is you should embrace the fact that you'll make mistakes and things will go wrong and learn from it, right? And take them as opportunities to to learn, to grow, and go and do something different.
And what differentiates a lot of successful leaders is if they learn from those experiences twist yeah and and challenges in their career or they don't like do you have one
of experience such as one year compete repeated over and over or is it 20 years of a growth journey exactly i think that's the key right
yeah so the key is that that learning right um because it's okay to make mistakes you just don't want to repeat them um yep
If you could go back and have one conversation with your younger self at the very beginning of Grafana's journey, what would you tell him that would save him the most stress, frustration, and wasted energy?
I mean, I, I really struggle to, uh, to come up with answers for this because, you know, one of the things, uh, they find very easy is like, you know, we've obviously had a huge amount of success, right.
Um, you know, there's been mistakes, you know, there's been tough times, but, um, they're all great learning opportunities.
Um, and so, you know, the thing that I always kind of think of is like, I wouldn't go and change anything, right.
You know, I don't want to go back and tell myself not to go and do something and then miss out on an opportunity to learn something that, you know, was really critical to the journey that we've been on.
So, you know, certainly for me, you know, I just like to embrace, you know, the past.
And that's certainly, you know, because I know people ask me this question and really what they're looking for is like, what should I do, right? And really my advice is you should embrace the fact that you'll make mistakes and things will go wrong and learn from it, right? And take them as opportunities to to learn, to grow, and go and do something different.
And what differentiates a lot of successful leaders is if they learn from those experiences twist yeah and and challenges in their career or they don't like do you have one
of experience such as one year compete repeated over and over or is it 20 years of a growth journey exactly i think that's the key right
yeah so the key is that that learning right um because it's okay to make mistakes you just don't want to repeat them um yep
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