Is your business or organisation crippled by fear of failure? And how do you react when things don’t quite go according to plan? Recriminations? Witch hunts? Blame?
Stephen Fry has today blasted the culture of fear at the BBC.
He said:
A lot of the adventure and excitement have gone out of television programming and a lot of it is just down to fear. There is this thing, I call it interfearing. I do know of so many cases where executives would say ‘What we want is something new, something different, something extraordinary! And they’re brought something new, different and extraordinary and immediately the executive gets cold feet, falls back on something else and we end up with something incredibly bland.
He added executives were more inclined to play it safe but,
For a creative institution, that’s death.
I read a good blog post about the Miracle of making mistakes the other day. Vineet Nayar wrote:
Make no mistake: The fear of making mistakes is deeply ingrained in our psyche.
All through school, a mistake indicates the prospect of lower grades. Good students don’t make mistakes. At home, mistakes lead to admonishments. Good children follow the rules. At work, mistakes have serious repercussions. Good workers get it right the first time.
In businesses, some if us obsessively guard against failure (amongst other things) by planning too much at the expense of doing.
Research, desk study has a crucial role in any business. I’m a big fan. But not at the expense of action. Research should fuel action. Not impede it. (“We need to research that first Geoff before we do anything!”)
Planning is all done in the name of maximising success and efficiency. We all want success right? But I think it has more to do with an underlying fear of making a mistake. I have been and still remain as guilty of this to some degree as anyone.
Now, I’m not advocating that you frantically go around making fundamentally bad decisions. But I argue that, anyone simply drawing on common sense will get more decisions in business – and personal life for that matter – right than wrong.
So what about when you make a bad decision?
Two things.
1. I have learned more from making just one mistake than any activity that goes exactly as planned.
2. How we respond to mistakes communicates important facts about our characters When the going gets tough etc.
And this can be a powerful opportunity to actually endear ourselves to our customers. A calm prompt resolution can impress more than an all encompassing embarrassment at being outed as less than perfect.
As Vineet said,
Do you remember the first time you rode a bicycle? Can you relive the exhilaration of riding free, the sense of triumph as you broke free of the crutches of support? Now step back. How many times did you fall off the bike before that first ride?
I remember my first class in engineering school during which our professor asked us to dismantle an engine. We did that. Then he asked us to put it together and walked away. We messed that up big time and had to work at it for days. I learned more about engineering in that short time than I did in the next four years.
I believe this ‘fear of mistakes stifling action’ is at the heart of the perceived weaknesses of the public sector – and some large organisations. Committee follows agenda follows meeting follows feedback session follows .. etc. Is it truly in the name of improving success and efficiency? Or, is it more about covering backs in the name of avoiding mistakes which might offer more sticks for the public and customers to beat them with?
I’m not saying we should intentionally go out to make mistakes. But we should trust our judgement and go with what drives us and what we are passionate about. Not what committees and focus groups deem appropriate courses of action. If possible, plans and research should sit along side the activity and evolve as our priorities do.
Smarter men than me kind of agree?
James Joyce believed:
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
And Albert Einstein said,
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
So the next time Captain Cock Up pays you a visit (And it will be soon if you’re human) you should tolerate him! And treat his hopefully brief stay as an opportunity to show the world what you’re really made of.
