Insights. To me it’s all about insights. Every day people make decisions. Sometimes those decisions are right. Sometimes they are wrong. While I’d prefer that people were right every single time, the reality is that’s impossible. So, I focus on the insights that drove the decision they made. Were the insights grounded in the right foundation? Were they strategic? Were they on trend? Were they sourced from the right locations? Someone who makes mistakes that are grounded in strong insights, I can accept. Those mistakes are honest ones and with the right coaching they can be all but eliminated.
The problem is, in most organizations we have a fear based culture where making mistakes is seen as a bad thing…and all mistakes are treated the same. If you will, context when evaluating the mistake is taken off the table, when in fact it should be the first thing on the table. I’ve worked in a fear based culture and it’s no fun. When you have a fear driven culture in place, you end up with a lot of sandbagging. Here’s a little narrative to explain what I mean:
- Widget line manager asks the widget maker, how many widgets can you make in a week? The widget maker knows he can make 25, but just in case he can’t says 20.
- The widget line manager tells the widget foreman they can make 15 widgets, because he certainly doesn’t want to be blames if they don’t make 20. And besides, if he says 15 and they make 20, he’s a hero.
- The widget foreman tells the widget plant manager they can make 10 for the same reasons the widget line manager told the widget foreman 15.
- The widget plant manger now tells the sales force they can make 5 widgets because he needs to pad and sandbag.
- The sales force tells the Wal*Mart buyer, they can produce 1 widget a week for them to carry.
- Wal*Mart says, no thanks we need at least 20.
Fear, drives us to stretch the truth. It drives us to sandbag. It drives us to be inaccurate. This is the reason I rarely trust financial projections. Who wants to say they are going to generate $1,000,000 this quarter, then hit $990,000 (falling short by only $10,000) and disappoint everyone?
The truth is we all lie all the time because of fear. Think about it. When you tell someone you’ll see them in 30 minutes, you’ve added in padding/wiggle room. We pad, wiggle, buffer and provide slack all the time because we fear not hitting our mark. Fear, drives inaccuracies. If we were more understanding of mistakes and took into account context and intent, we might just become more accurate. And, isn’t that what we’re all striving for?