Just flip that "failure is OK" switch
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There's a guest post by Ralph Heath on Smartblog on Workforce titled "5 essentials for creating a fearless organization." Here's one of those five essentials.
"Develop a culture of controlled risk taking. Fear and paranoia are crippling mentally and physically. A fearless workforce is free to think big and test bold new ideas. No one will stop their ideas with killer phrases like 'we tried that before' or 'we don’t have enough (insert one: time, money, space, talent).'"
Here are a few of my thoughts.
Developing a culture is not like throwing a switch or sending everyone to an offsite. A company's culture accretes slowly from thousands of actions by bosses. It builds up through the distribution of rewards and punishments. It solidifies as people notice, year by year, who gets promoted and who gets shunned.
When you go to change a culture, you've got three problems. There are the bosses. There are the people who work for them. And there's everything that's happened to them in their entire work lives.
You can only change a culture slowly, over time, with consistent actions. It's not fast and it's not easy.
Then the post talks about how no one will stop ideas with killer phrases. Perhaps. But there will be killer looks. There's likely to be killer non-funding. There may be a killer schedule that doesn't just doesn't allow the time you need.
Most of the people who work in our companies know that if you haven't got a budget for it, it's not important. And most companies don't have a budget that allows most of their people to try new things.
Finally, the real test isn't whether you let them try, or not. The real test is what happens when the results are in.
If the boss takes the credit for success while the team member took the risk, that team member won't be trying new things anytime soon. Neither will his or her coworkers.
If the trial doesn't work out and you call it a failure, you're not likely to get people lining up to try things. That's because the "f" in failure is the real scarlet letter in the corporate world.
Boss's Bottom Line
If you want your people to try new things, don't strive to convince them that risks are OK. Instead get rid of the risks and treat your trials as experiments. Experiments are wins no matter how they come out.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: Creativity, Innovation, Culture, Failure
Tags: Innovation Failure Culture Creativity
I know what you mean about changing culture in an organization. My experience with it has shown me just how much hard work it is. And, in spite of gargantuan efforts on the parts of a few, it rarely stays the course unless all involved in it can come to believe in it and see its benefits.
It's kind of like wearing an old fashioned girdle. You can put all manner of shapes inside it but the minute you take it off, it snaps back into its original form.
So you're right. There is no magic 'culture switch'
Great post, Wally.
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Thanks, Gwyn. Wise as always. Sometimes the greatest force for change is a few well-placed retirements.
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Fearless can be as bad as fearful. Both feel like over-reactions to problems that might not be well understood. And while I prefer a can-do attitude, real decisions still need to be made when allocating resources and deciding strategy. Spot on as usual Wally.
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Great point, Fred. "Fearless" sounds bold and macho and good. But fearless by itself is dangerous.
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Wally, I love the post and the topic. Deming had it right in my opinion as he implored the bosses to "drive out fear" in the workplace.
The healthiest environments that I've worked in or observed viewed the workplace as a constant set of experiments, and while reckless experimentation was not supported, genuine efforts were applauded, learned from and leveraged.
-Art
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Thanks for referencing Deming, Art. It's a great point. It's hard to drive out fear if trying can jeopardize your career success.
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Great points. Thanks for bringing this up! Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." It's only a matter of way of thought. It takes courage and determination, but that's what it takes to be a leader, right?
-alex
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Thanks for coming by. I really don't know how many things Edison actually tried. Some quotes say 10,000 and others as little as a hundred. The number really doesn't matter. It's the courage and determination you mention that turns into persistence.
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I remember studying these killer phrases in my MBA course, organizational behavior. These kinds of sentences actually demean employee's motivation and unfortunately people who use it actually suffer the most! Its about changing the whole culture and making organization a learning organization like Google, Samsung, Sony, etc...
Cheers,
Jennifer.
http://www.hirelabs.com/
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This blog reminds me of my Organizational behavior class. i remember how my teacher was emphasizing on organizational culture's importance... He gave us the example of Google's extraordinarily friendly and risk loving culture. It was great to discuss Google's case study in class.
Cheers
Jennifer
http://www.hirelabs.com
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Thanks for your comments. I deleted the link you had to the case study because it was only available for purchase in Rupees and only available to instructors.
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