Does Psychological Safety Inspire or Impede Innovation?
An anonymous comment in my survey results for today's "Ask Gib" essay asked for more discussion around this controversial statement:
“I don’t think psychological safety leads to breakthroughs. You need a demanding environment with clear standards and a willingness to raise the bar to accomplish world-class results.” - Gibson Biddle.
The commenter continued, "I am curious whether you mean there needs to be BOTH or if it’s ok only to have the latter. IMHO, that’s the definition of a toxic workplace where one cannot say anything without being attacked and torn down, even if innovations are one outcome. I hope that is not what you were encouraging! If your perspective is different, I'm very interested in understanding more."
Thank you for your feedback. I'm not advocating a toxic work environment, but the answer is not quite both psychological safety & a willingness to raise the bar. It's more nuanced than this, and Netflix does an excellent job articulating these trade-offs in their culture document.
Netflix encourages employees to be "extraordinarily candid with each other." They also advocate a "dream team" where folks are terminated if they no longer have the skills required for the company's continued growth. But Netflix describes their "communication" value in a way that helps to avoid creating a toxic environment. Here’s the full description of this value:
Communication:
- You are concise and articulate in speech and writing.
- You listen well and seek to understand before reacting.
- You maintain calm poise in stressful situations to draw out the clearest thinking.
- You adapt your communication style to work well with people from around the world who may not share your native language.
- You provide candid, helpful, timely feedback to colleagues.
It’s worth reading the full document. Several other values (Inclusion, Courage) provide guardrails that help to avoid creating a toxic environment.
Amazon's "Leadership Principles" gets at some of these issues, too. Two of their values stand out: "Hire and develop the best" and "Insist on the highest standards.” (Read Amazon's culture document here.)
My conclusion: Too much focus on psychological safety can lead folks to be uncomfortable with open, passionate debate, which in my experience, is necessary to elevate the best ideas, which leads to creative breakthroughs. Raising the bar -- ensuring higher and higher quality standards -- is required, too. Sometimes this means letting employees go as their skills fail to develop at the same rate as the company’s development or the company finds itself in all-new categories.
Netflix evolved from a DVD-by-mail startup to an original content powerhouse -- the talent required for each of these two chapters is very different. Letting people go degrades psychological safety but it's exciting-- and highly motivating-- to work in an environment filled with highly talented individuals.
Debates like these -- psychological safety v. high standards -- inspire the best thinking in organizations & force companies to articulate the values, skills, and behaviors required to be successful within that organization. Company values help employees navigate these apparent contradictions.
If my anonymous commenter is reading this, thank you for your feedback and follow-up question. I am curious to hear other's thoughts on this topic, too.
If you haven’t read it yet, click here to read today’s "Ask Gib" essay.
Best,
Gib
Joining marketing & sales for B2B orgs with product marketing
3 年But doesn't this line "Too much focus on psychological safety can lead folks to be uncomfortable with open, passionate debate" argue against itself? If you don't have psychological safety, you would not engage in debate at all for fear of being ridiculed, discounted, or worse? Doesn't debate only happen in an environment where everyone knows they are safe to throw any idea, no matter how ridiculous, into the ring and objectively stand back and see how it is received? Psychological safety is knowing that it's your idea that is being debated, not you as a person.
Normain Co-Founder & CEO | Bringing Magic to Knowledge Work | Stanford Engineer | Ex-BCG
3 年Gitte Frederiksen could be a relevant discussion/read for next gen
Group Product Manager @ Google
3 年I loved your concluding point, Gibson Biddle- we have to be comfortable to debate/challenge appropriately. Real psychological safety enables that. This is really a “when psychological safety is implemented correctly...” statement. Agile, psych safety, culture, etc are empty if those principles are not met with purpose, intentionality and alignment across teams.
Product Design at Benchling ??
3 年A few observations: 1. Organizational cultures, like human cultures, exist on a spectrum. There are some lines we can draw on moral grounds (e.g. abuse, harassment, violence), but others are very subject to personal preference (e.g. intensity vs. balance, competition vs. cooperation, etc). Some certainly tend to produce certain outcomes more consistently than others. 2. Organizations can and should do more to stomp out the former. On the latter, they should be more transparent / clear, so potential employees can make an informed choice about what they're signing up for. 3. We often frame this conversation in terms of how an organization can better create an environment for trust, open and honest discussion, risk-taking without retribution, etc. This makes sense since leadership has an outsized impact on the culture of an organization. But, I'd like there to be more focus on helping employees develop the mindsets / skills for grit / resilience, debating ideas, advocating for yourself, and leading / influence. It's not to shift the onus of fixing toxic cultures onto employees, but to empower them with agency and transferable skills they can take anywhere.