Work Matters

Tag: Learning

  • Carolyn’s Rule: A Great Test of Character

    My attempt to stave off email bankruptcy is not only going pretty well — I am down to 135 emails to deal with — I just found a gem from a couple months back that forgot to write about here.  A reader who asked to described as "Carolyn in Austin, Texas" wrote me nice note about The No Asshole Rule and especially emphasized that she liked my assertion in Chapter 1 that "The difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. "

    Carolyn suggested a second test that I just love.  In fact, let's call it Carolyn's Rule:

    You can determine someone’s character by how quickly they realize they’ve made a mistake and how readily they admit it.

    Not bad, huh? It makes me think of one colleague I've know from nearly 30 years who has never admitted a mistake — even in multiple cases where it is clear this person has made big mistakes, has damaged other people, and it would be best for all concerned.  Indeed, as I implied over at HBR, Carolyn's Rule is also a good test of a boss's skill.

  • Fear-Based Performance Management at Fox News?

    Regardless of what you may think about Fox News, it is hard to argue with their commercial success.  Nonetheless, at least based on a leaked memo published over at Gawker, it appears that senior management is concerned about a rash of mistakes.  They are apparently responding by instituting a fear-based system. 

    I say "apparently" because I have no idea if this is actually written by Fox executives. Real or fake, it provides a good illustration of the kind of thing that seems reasonable, but that — at least if you believe the basic underpinnings of the quality movement (quality guru W. Edwards Deming's mantra was "Drive Out Fear") and related research by Amy Edmondson and others on psychological safety, mistakes, and learning — these are practices that aren't likely to eliminate mistakes, but they will amplify CYA behavior, brainstorming, and tendency to make the same mistakes over and over again.  I would add that perhaps they may increase personnel costs as people are fired for their mistakes, blamed and shown the door, and then new people come in and keep making the same mistakes because the system stifles learning. 

    Here is the alleged memo from the Fox executives.  Let me know what you think about it — would this work in your organization?

    Subject: Quality
    Control     We had a mistake on Newsroom today when a wrong book cover
    went on screen during a guest segment, the kind of thing that can fall
    through the cracks on any day with any story given the large amount of
    elements and editorial we run through our broadcasts. Unfortunately, it
    is the latest in a series of mistakes on FNC in recent months. We have
    to all improve our performance in terms of ensuring error-free
    broadcasts. To that end, there was a meeting this afternoon between
    senior managers and the folks who run the daytime shows in which
    expectations were reviewed, and the following results were announced:
    Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors.
    Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in
    immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant
    roles in the "mistake chain," and those who supervise them. That may
    include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other
    possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all
    obviously play a role in performance reviews.

    So we now face a great
    opportunity to review and improve on our workflow and quality control
    efforts. To make the most of that opportunity, effective immediately,
    Newsroom is going to "zero base" our newscast production. That means we
    will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and
    manageable elements. To share a key quote from today's meeting: "It is
    more important to get it right, than it is to get it on." We may then
    build up again slowly as deadlines and workloads allow so that we can be
    sure we can quality check everything before it makes air, and we never
    having to explain, retract, qualify or apologize again. Please know that
    jobs are on the line here. I can not stress that enough. I will review
    again during our Monday editorial meeting, and in the days and weeks
    ahead. This experience should make us stronger editorially, and I
    encourage everyone to invest themselves one hundred and ten percent in
    this effort.

    P.S. See this post on "The best diagnostic question" for a much different approach to learning from failure. Although I should note that there is another interesting element here: The memo implies that getting it right rather than getting done as quickly as possible will be rewarded more now –which is a step away from from fear and toward quality. 

  • Karl Weick On Why “Am I a Success or a Failure?” Is The Wrong Question

    I've written about The University of Michigan's Karl Weick here several times before, for example here and here, as he is one of the most creative and thoughtful people I know.  He, more so than anyone know, looks at the same things as everyone else, but sees something different.  I was just reading a paper that he wrote on renewal this morning and came across this stunning set of sentences:

    Roethlisberger argues that people who are preoccupied with
    success ask the wrong question. They ask, “what is the secret of success” when
    they should be asking, “what prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly
    preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where
    learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a
    failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to
    answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure.

    As usual, Weick sees things another way, and teaches us something.  One of the implications of this statement is that the most constructive ways to go through life is to keep focusing on what you learn and how you can get better in the future, rather than fretting or gloating over what you've done in the past (and seeing yourself as serving a life sentence as a winner or loser).  Some twists of Weick's simple ideas are explored in Carol Dweck's compelling research in in Mindset.

    P.S. The
    source for this quote is         Weick, Karl E. How Projects Lose Meaning: "The Dynamics of Renewal." in Renewing
    Research Practice         by R. Stablein and P. Frost (Eds.). Stanford, CA:
    Stanford. 2004.