Celebrate Mistakes and Learn like CEO Stephen King
Mark Graban
I help organizations and leaders drive continuous improvement and spark innovation through Lean management, building a culture of learning from mistakes, and fostering psychological safety. 3 Shingo Book Awards.
This is an excerpt from?The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation, based on?an episode of the “My Favorite Mistake” podcast.
Stephen King, CPA (not the famous novelist) is the CEO of GrowthForce, a company that provides accounting and bookkeeping services. Stephen says learning from mistakes is the “single most-important part” of their culture.[i]
Stephen wants his employees to feel safe sharing mistakes. One employee admitted she had entered the wrong bank account for a sales-tax payment, resulting in a $2500 late-payment penalty. How does Stephen react to mistakes like these? “By learning from that first mistake, you avoid that down the road. You put a process in place” to prevent or catch mistakes.
Stephen leads the way and models behaviors that help build psychological safety. For example, after a sales call, he asks, “What did I do wrong? How do we make that better?” He adds, “When the boss makes a lot of dumb mistakes, you’d better learn from them.” That gives permission for others to admit mistakes. While we might avoid the word “dumb,” employees can follow Stephen’s lead in learning from mistakes.
He created an award for the “best mistake of the month,” meaning it’s “one we can fix” and has “the greatest impact on the business.” This can surprise new employees, who tell him they’ve never worked in a place that celebrated mistakes, let alone give a $50 gift card for making one. A few managers pushed back on the financial reward, but learning from mistakes is built into the culture and is now reinforced by giving people recognition instead of rewards.
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[i]?My Favorite Mistake, “Episode 36, Stephen King,”?https://markgraban.com/mistake36.
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What do you think? What are the pros and cons of having a "Best Mistake" competition and recognition? Of giving a financial reward?
What do you think about Stephen calling his mistakes "dumb"? Is that helpful language to use about our own mistakes? Even smart people make mistakes, right?
Chief Executive Officer at Alwarood Medical Center
1 年I would add that letting the employee who made the mistake fix, it would assure the company that this would never happen again, at least from the same employee