The Performance Improvement Blog

No-Fear Failure

Fear of failure has a name: atychiphobia. Who knew? While that phobia is a rare, debilitating anxiety with serious mental and physical repercussions, many of us have a reluctance to take risks that might result in what we perceive to be a loss of respect, status, or careers. We also worry about spending time and money on something that doesn’t succeed, but those are only proxies for self-esteem. The problem is that without risk-taking and the failures that inevitably come with that, nothing truly new and innovative is created.

Regina Dugan, former Director of DARPA and now with Google, says in a TED presentation (See below.):

Scientists and engineers defy the impossible and refuse to fear failure…when you remove the fear of failure impossible things suddenly become possible…ask yourself this question, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”…we cannot both fear failure and make amazing new things.

 

Where would we be without airplanes, manned rockets into space, and the internet? Yet these inventions were the result of many prior failures. Dugan argues that risk-taking and failure are simply part of the inventive process.

One of the major barriers to risk-taking in organizations is leadership. Whether real or imagined, we worry that we will be judged harshly by leaders who want to hear only about successes. Many leaders intentionally and unintentionally send the message that failure is not tolerated. An exception to this kind of leader is Kyle Zimmer, head of First Book. In an interview with Adam Bryant of the New York Times, she talks about looking for the experience of failure in the people she hires. She says:

We want people who have tried things, and have failed, and have risen above it. Those indicators that you’re a builder are profoundly important. Because if you’re bright, and you’re a builder, and you’ve overcome the winds that blow against anybody trying to build anything, a lot of other things fall away, like defensiveness.

I’ll say, “Have you ever started anything? From the time you were little, did you invent anything? An organization? Did you start a club?” Then I’ll ask, “What was the hardest part of that? What about failure? Talk to me about failure.” I think that is really important, because if you’re pushing, you’re going to fail. If you’re pushing in whatever you’re doing, you’re going to fail way more than you succeed. It’s that old saying: “You can fail without ever succeeding, but you can’t succeed without ever failing.”

The culture we live in teaches us to fear failure, and I think that’s a huge mistake. When I look back over the history of our organization, the times we’ve been most creative were a result of the pressure of a failure or near failure.

Taking a risk without asking for feedback about the innovation is what should be feared. That truly would be a waste of time and money. Alison Provost, CEO of touchstorm.com, in 30SECONDMBA, talks about the importance of listening to your customers when trying something new. She says:

Ideas don't have to be perfect before you take them to the marketplace. In fact, the true process of innovation is the opposite of that. That essentially, you have your idea and you take it to the marketplace, and you sit with customers and you say, 'This is it.' And they say, 'No, we don't want it quite like that; we want it different than that.' And you adjust it. And you take it back to the office, and back to your folks, who then have to change the product and adjust as you go. And that's the nature of innovating. It's really the fundamental nature of creativity. It's moving in incremental bits to something that is market ready and market worthy. 

It’s not failure that’s the problem. That comes with the territory. The problem is failing to collect information about the innovation or not using data to make improvements and increase the likelihood of success in the future. If we are going to create new businesses and solve the most serious problems that we face as a society, we must continue to try things that have a high likelihood of failure. And we must evaluate what we do and learn from the information. 

 

Learning Organization is Culture, Processes, and Leadership

“Organizational learning” and “learning organization” are terms that continue to be misused. It seems like these days any business, nonprofit, or government agency that provides training and education to its employees calls itself a learning organization. They might do a lot of training and education but that doesn’t necessarily mean employees are learning and, most importantly, it doesn’t mean that their individuals and teams are learning what they need to know in order to become and stay high performance organizations.

With the proliferation of elearning and mlearning, I’m afraid that more accessible training and education is being confused with learning. Companies are rightly proud of themselves for the quality and quantity of online performance support that they are providing. Whether employees are continuously learning and applying that learning to achieving strategic goals is another matter entirely.

It is organizational learning that will make some organizations more successful than others over the long run. Quoting Ray Stata, co-founder and former CEO of Analog Devices, Harvard Business Professor David Garvin says that learning may be the only sustainable competitive advantage for organizations today. He explains that products, services, and processes can be copied. This observation is being played out today in the many Web-based companies. Having a search engine, online payment processing, or social networking capability was a competitive advantage only a short time ago. No more. Software engineers can create comparable services seemingly overnight. Companies have to be continually learning and changing in order to merely stay in the game, let alone win the game.

 

Garvin, one of the early thought leaders on organizational learning, and another Harvard Business Professor, Amy Edmonson, define “learning organization” in an interview he and Amy Edmonson did with HBR in 2008 (See video.). They say:

…a learning organization is an organization skilled at two things: one, creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge; and, second, acting, modifying its behavior to respond to [that] new knowledge and insights.  

Garvin and Edmonson go on to talk about the “three building blocks” of organizational learning: 1) environment; 2) work processes; and 3) leadership. I interpret “environment” to mean organizational culture. This includes the values, basic assumptions, beliefs, expected behaviors, and norms of the organization. These aspects of culture must be aligned with continuous learning about and from the work of the organization. “Processes” are the routine ways in which the work gets done. Work and learning must be part of the same process. And by “leadership” they mean what top level leaders do to support, encourage, and remove barriers to learning and performance improvement. All three of these “building blocks” must be in place for an organization to be a truly learning organization.

 

The Unexamined Leadership Program is Not Worth Doing

If you’re not going to evaluate a leadership development program, don’t do the program! It will be a waste of time, money, energy, and trust. End-of-program reactionnaires (aka smile sheets) don’t count as evaluation. I’m talking about a systematic, evidence-based look at why it was done, what was done, how it was done, what happened as a result, how it can be improved, and what the organization learned from the process.

Viv Nunn of UK’s Open University, in an article for TrainingZone, explains some of the reasons for evaluating professional development programs. She writes that evaluation should provide the following:

• Evidence of the extent to which the professional development is contributing to your organisation's success
• Validation that the correct learning solution has been identified and suggestions for programme improvement
• Advice about how to get the most from your L&D budget by considering the workplace learning environment

I would add:

• Reinforcement of learning. That is, the act of evaluating (i.e., observing) a leadership development program reinforces learning. If done well, evaluation heightens awareness of goals, unintended consequences, and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that were learned.

To achieve these purposes, you have to look beyond the seminar, workshop, internship, mentoring, coaching, online course, or any other method of instruction. Learning, especially about leadership, is affected by the organizational environment and external factors, as well as the program. To fully understand why and how learning did or did not occur and what impact it had, you have to examine organizational factors in addition to program factors.

Nunn provides us with an excellent description of the factors that can affect learning:

If the workplace learning environment isn't right, if learners cannot find opportunities to apply what they have learned at work, if the organisational culture is not one which encourages them to try out their new skills and knowledge, there will be little or no impact to report, regardless of how effective the actual learning solution has been. Isolating learning from its context will not provide useful data alone. Evaluating the context of learning along with the learning solution will give you the greatest opportunity to get the most from your investment.

I hate to think about how many leadership development programs I’ve participated in as either a learner or facilitator that were thought-provoking, information-rich, and emotionally powerful only to find that they resulted in little or no change because there was no immediate opportunity to apply that learning back on the job. Participants might learn about team-building but not have a team to lead in the workplace or be discouraged by management from applying what they learned in their teams.

Evaluation of professional development must examine how workplace culture supports or hinders learning. Knowing whether intended results follow, in time, a professional development program or not, won't help you unless you understand the factors that affected those results. And, as Nunn suggests, it's things like clarity of goals, manager's attitudes toward learning, incentives for professional development, opportunities to apply new learning, and feedback, that have more to say about performance improvement than does the quality of instruction alone. 

Evaluation is not an option; it’s an integral part of the learning process. If you want a leadership development program to be more than entertainment and you want it to achieve learning that results in significant performance improvement, than you must evaluate the program and the organizational evironment of that program.

 

Leaders Make or Break Employee Engagement

A leader’s attitude and behavior determine whether an organization has an engaged workforce or not. In other words, what leaders think and feel and say and do has a profound impact on employee
satisfaction, enthusiasm for their work, desire to do their best, and commitment to go beyond their job descriptions every day. In an article for The Business Thinker, my colleague Jim Stilwell and I describe 13 ways in which leaders affect employee engagement. Here is our list: 

1. Understanding of Engagement

What do leaders know about engagement and how aware are they of their reasons for supporting it? What types of engagement will they and won’t they support?

2. Beliefs about Alignment of Engagement with Organization’s Strategic Goals

To what extent do leaders believe that engagement is necessary for achieving business results? Do they believe that employee engagement will help the organization be successful? And why do they believe this?

3. Beliefs about People in General

What do leaders believe about the desire of people to act responsibly, ethically, and in the best interests of the people around them? How confident are leaders that people will try to do their best? To what extent do leaders truly value the people around them? 

4. Beliefs about Employees

What do leaders believe about the behavior of their employees? Do they believe that employees always have the best interests of the organization in mind or do they believe that employees are always unthinking and uncaring? 

5. Emotional Intelligence

Can leaders perceive and understand emotions in others and in themselves? Are they sensitive to the social/emotional needs of employees? To what extent can leaders manage their own emotions?

6. Tolerance for Dissent, Conflict and Differences among Peers, Direct Reports, and Other Managers

Do leaders tolerate views that are different from their own? Will they listen to employee dissent without being judgmental and punitive? To what extent do leaders actively seek out views that are different from their own? 

7. Expression of Caring for Others

Are leaders authentic and open in their expression of appreciation and caring to employees?

8. Tolerance for Autonomy

Will leaders allow employees to act on their own without specific directions on how to complete a task? Will they allow employees to figure out for themselves how to best achieve a goal?

9. Trust

Are leaders both trusting and trustworthy. Do they do what they say they are going to do? Do they follow through on their commitments and responsibilities? Do they give others the authority and responsibility to make important decisions?

10. Bias in Decision-Making

Are leaders aware of the biases underlying their “fast thinking” decisions? Do they know how their biases are affecting their decisions? Is this acceptable to them? 

11. Thinking Patterns

Are leaders more cerebral, analytical, and logical in their thinking or are they more emotional and feeling based in their thinking? Whichever pattern is dominant, do they value this kind of thinking in others?

12. Beliefs about Leadership

What do leaders believe about good leadership? Do they believe that one style works for all employees (e.g., command-and-control) or do they believe that the style of most effective leadership depends on the situation? Do they believe that effective leaders are charismatic and operate from a base of power or do they believe that leadership and power should be shared with others? 

13. Self-Awareness

Are leaders aware of their values and beliefs and how their actions are viewed by others? Is the way that they actually practice leadership in sync with what they believe to be the best way to lead? 

We recognize that it’s a tall order to ask every organization leader to have this level of introspection. However, if leaders want employees to be fully engaged in their work and the organization, then leaders need to ask themselves these questions and understand the impact of their answers.

 

Do You Need a CCO and CLO?

Should your organization have a CCO and CLO? Paul Hebert argues against organizations appointing a Chief Culture Officer.

Hebert writes:

…as soon as you codify, quantify and assign responsibility to something it ceases to be everyone’s responsibility…Culture is a defined as a set of shared values, behaviors, norms.  Shared.  Operative word.  Shared means we all have a part in the outcome and the input…If you create a job called “Culture Chief” you’ve just provided a backdoor for every manager, every employee to use as their personal escape route when culture starts to go wrong at your company.

I agree with Hebert and I have similar concerns with having a CLO (Chief Learning Officer). Learning is what employees in high performance organizations must do continuously as part of their jobs. Companies don’t have CWOs (Chief Work Officer), so why do they have CLOs? I suspect CEOs appoint CCOs and CLOs because it makes them feel like they are doing something about the work environment and employee development. The risk is that responsibility for employee engagement and learning will be relegated to a department and not owned by every executive, manager, and employee in the organization.

For a long time, organizations have built a department around training and given it a director in order to give it status and to protect it from the budgetary absorption of other units. The unintended consequence has been to reinforce the notion that work and learning are separate and that one has higher value than the other when, in fact, the success of the organization depends on continuous learning. To break out of this mental model, companies should stop doing things that appear to centralize responsibility for learning. Don’t put all the emphasis on a course catalogue and don’t hire a CLO.

I see the need for a CFO and a CIO. They are leaders of operational areas that require specialized focus on managing, maintaining, and improving systems that support those operations. Those areas need a voice at the executive table. But culture and learning are who we are and how we work collectively. They should be nurtured and actively fostered daily by everyone. 

On the other hand, any kind of major change in an organization needs a champion. Employees want a face on actions that affect the way they do their work and how they are rewarded. They are more likely to commit to doing things differently and going in a different strategic direction if they believe that the leadership of the organization fully endorses the new direction.   A credible, respected leader that frequently reminds people of the change can play a key role in ensuring that the change happens and that it sticks. Also, it’s good to see the visibility for culture and learning that comes with appointment of a person in those positions. However, if sole responsibility for the change rests with that leader, it will not be sustained over time. Eyes will roll every time that person opens his or her mouth. A high performance culture and continuous employee learning will not become woven into the fabric of the organization.

Change in culture, such as transforming an organization from high fear to high trust, has to be done collectively and requires that everyone in the organization accept responsibility for doing things differently and recognizing and rewarding people differently. Change in learning, such as managers forming an alliance with their direct reports around learning and performance improvement, also requires shared responsibility and mutual support for doing things quite differently. Learning is everybody’s business whether at the individual, team, or organization level.

Leadership for culture and learning should come from CEOs. It’s their job to set the strategic direction for the organization and ensure that the organization is aligned with that direction. Culture and learning are the foundation for that alignment. I understand the desire of CEOs to departmentalize those roles, but the downside risk is significant. 

 

Why Good Leaders Choose to Do Bad Things

The reasons why good people commit business fraud are difficult to understand. Often, leaders who are honest, trustworthy, and generous in one part of their lives commit serious financial crimes in their businesses.  Enron had been one of the most admired companies in the world and a respected corporate citizen in Houston prior to its downfall from executives lying about financial performance. Bernie Madoff was a generous philanthropist before being convicted of operating the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history and ruining the lives of many investors in his wealth management business. Wal-Mart executives in Mexico are alleged to have committed bribery in order to grow the company’s business in that country while the corporation has been working hard to create an image of ethical conduct.  

A recent NPR broadcast, tells the story of Toby who, although personally committed to honesty, was convicted of bank fraud related to his mortgage business. He had aspired to be ethical and honest in his business dealings until he realized that he was in serious debt. One bad act led to another and employees and business associates (e.g., title companies) were drawn into the crimes because of their trust in Toby. Lying about his income led to lying about loans which accumulated to seven million dollars before his fraud was discovered by the FBI. A surprising aspect of his tale is that other people willingly conspired with him to defraud lenders.

Why do people who are good in one part of their lives do bad things in business? Ann Tenbrunsel, a Notre Dame University psychologist, found that how we frame a decision makes a difference. People thinking about a decision from a business frame will make a different decision than people who are thinking about the decision from an ethical frame. In business, many people have a cognitive blind spot regarding the ethics of their decisions.

Lamar Pierce, of Washington University in St. Louis, and Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, found that others are drawn into lying and cheating because of their relationships with the people initiating the fraud. They conclude, “Human beings commit fraud because human beings like each other.” Empathy for others makes us want to help them even if the act is illegal. When we consider the abstract consequences of the fraud in comparison to the needs of the person in front of us, we choose the person we like and trust. This ethical dilemma can be seen in many kinds of interdependent business relationships, such as: long-term auditor contracts; board members and the CEO they hired; lawyers and their clients; consultants and their clients; and employees and their managers.

I’m not excusing unethical and corrupt business practices. I’m just trying to understand why some leaders choose to do bad things in business when they wouldn’t do those things in other parts of their lives and why others choose to be complicit in those fraudulent actions. I’m also trying to understand what we need to do to ensure that corporate leaders apply an ethical frame to their decision-making.