The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

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Solvay Business School Professor Paul Verdin and I developed a perspective that frames an organization's strategy as a hypothesis rather than a plan.62 Like all hypotheses, it starts with situation assessment and analysis –strategy's classic tools. Also, like all hypotheses, it must be tested through action. When strategy is seen as a hypothesis to be continually tested, encounters with customers provide valuable data of ongoing interest to senior executives.” I also see parallels between psychological safety and DevOps in that they are both aspects of modern technology organizations that are essentially ‘win-win’: good for people and good for business.They both help to create more humane workplaces where people are able to focus their energy and their efforts in being creative, collaborating to solve problems and create new products and services. In boardroom discussions, the focus should be on how strategies today can help predict behaviors tomorrow. The Fearless Organization has connected partners that have global delivery capability, to help your organization implement solutions in an optimal way. Highly recommend reading this also with your team. This book is about how to build intentionally psychological safety within your team and get the benefit that will blow your organization into the next level. Learn from so many cases that successfully adopt this and which one who failed so badly.

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To make sure that X only works on the most promising ideas, the company has a “Rapid Evaluation” team that processes proposals, vets ideas, and promotes only those that seem achievable. This team, which consists of a combination of senior managers and inventors, first runs a pre-mortem, trying to come up with as many reasons as possible why the idea could fail.50 “Rapid Eval,” as the team is known, considers the problem's scale, feasibility, and technological risks.” In brief, a productive response to preventable failures is to double down on prevention, usually a combination of training and improved system design to make it easier for people to do the right thing. However, there are instances in which a preventable failure is the result of a blameworthy action or a repeated instance of deviation from prescribed process, impervious to prior attempts at redirection. In such cases, usually rare, there is an obligation to act in ways that prevent future occurrence. This may mean levying fines or other sanctions, and in some cases even firing someone.

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Productive responses often include expressions of appreciation, ranging from the small (“thank you so much for speaking up”) to the elaborate — celebrations or bonuses in response to intelligent failure. Failure is a necessary part of uncertainty and innovation, but this must be made explicit to reinforce the invitation for voice. I frequently ask managers, scientists, salespeople, and technologists around the world the following question: What percentage of the failures in your organizations should be considered blameworthy? Their answers are usually in the single digits — perhaps 1% to 4%. I then ask what percentage are treated as blameworthy. Now, they say (after a pause or a laugh) 70% to 90%! The unfortunate consequence of this gap between simple logic and organizational response is that many failures go unreported and their lessons are lost. Another super powerful way of creating cohesion amongst a team unified towards a shared goal, is to create a “Team Charter”. Team charters describe, through a collective and inclusive team co-creation exercise, everything about a team, from the members, goals, roles and responsibilities, to their rituals, practices and customers. Here’s a fantastic set of Team Charter Canvases shared by Miro: But, once the inflammatory memo has been made public, how should a company respond? My intention is not to illuminate the specifics of Damore's memo at Google but rather to suggest a general strategy for productive responses to actions or events in your organization that you wish had not occurred. A personality factor. People will speak up if they feel safe, regardless of whether they are an introvert or extrovert.

The Fearless Organization, Creating Psychological Safety in The Fearless Organization, Creating Psychological Safety in

Low levels of psychological safety can create a culture of silence (artificial harmony). They can also create a Cassandra culture—an environment in which speaking up is belittled and warnings go unheeded." Reading ‘The Fearless Organization’ it is quite clear that psychological safety is not something which is just going to happen by happy accident. When faced with situations that require us to speak up, our natural inclination is apparently to weigh up almost instantly the benefits and risks of doing so. Leaders must act with intent to create the environment that makes us want and feel able to speak, and must also continue to nurture that environment as otherwise it can easily disappear. How to get started with encouraging a fearless organization

Edmondson is regarded by many as being the leading expert on the topic of psychological safety. She is Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, and is the author of many articles and books on organizational behaviour and learning, teams, and psychological safety. ‘The Fearless Organization’ This is a great exercise in visioning – particularly useful for a team who want to find their north star, or determine what their higher level ambitions are. It’s called “Cover Stories” or “Newspaper Headlines”.“ This game is worth playing because it not only encourages people to “think big,” but also actually plants the seeds for a future that perhaps wasn’t possible before the game was played.“ And here’s another great team canvas from Design A Better Business. This one looks a lot more fun, though might not suit all teams! Achieving high performance requires having the confidence to take risks, especially in a knowledge-intensive world. When an organization minimizes the fear people feel on the job, performance — at both the organizational and the team level — is maximized. But how do you make your organization fearless in a way that builds its capability?