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Rick Maurer Tip #72
Looking at Failure. |
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April 29, 2010
Greetings!
Looking at Failure
Tom Boswell wrote a compelling piece about leadership and responsibility (The Washington Post, 4/26/10).
The Washington Nationals, a baseball team that has struggled in its first five seasons in DC, lost in a 13 inning game last weekend. (For those who don't follow baseball, that's four more innings than a regular game. It makes for a long, tense, and tiring game.) It's easy and natural to try to put that bad experience behind you.
Boswell wrote, "Most days, ballplayers need the emotional stability to endure a long season. But not always. Not after the worst defeats. Beware of players who wash those brutal losses off along with the shower water. Get rid of those who, too many times, fall back on the most pernicious words a pro athlete can utter - "We'll get 'em tomorrow" - as they head to their luxury cars in the parking lot."
One of the team's executives said, "On Saturday they wore that game so hard in here. It was not a nice place to be. . ." Boswell believes that's the type of character it takes for a team to survive and continue to play up to their potential for a full season.
I think this willingness to look into the face of failure directly is missing from many corporate teams. I have rarely been in a meeting with a client when they wanted to delve deeply into what had gone wrong with a project. The key word here is deeply. Looking for scapegoats or quick cheap solutions doesn't equal deep. The "five whys?" series of questions that are the hallmark of many quality improvement processes, is an example of having the courage to keep looking deeper and deeper.
Theory X and Theory Y
As I drastically revised my 1996 book, Beyond the Wall of Resistance, I was drawn back to Douglas McGregor's classis Theory X and Theory Y as a way to describe the challenges of leading change in organizations today. This month I recorded a 12-minute Podcast titled "Informal talk about the value of Theory X and Theory Y for those who lead change." I posted it in the Rick's Change Resources section of the Change Management Open Source Project - just click on Podcasts and scroll toward the bottom of the page (the podcast is dated April, 2010). You can join for free.
By the way, Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of Changes Still Fail - and What To Do About It will be released this summer.
Warm regards,
Rick Maurer
President
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