Four Ways To Improve Predictability (Tip #4)

This is a continuation of a four-part series.

• Part #1: Narrow your planning horizon
• Part #2: Use empirical data
• Part #3: Create smaller teams
• You are here --> Part #4: Eliminate the fear of failure

Tip #4: Eliminate fear of failure

Today it's trendy for leaders to espouse a culture that minimizes fear of failure. Unfortunately, culture isn’t something leaders can dictate. Changing a culture starts with changing leadership behavior, which in turn influences team behavior. The goal is a change in day-to-day behavior for everyone in the organization.

It’s all in your head…literally!

How we behave as leaders directly results in a subconscious neurological response in our team members. When a team member experiences a stressful situation, their brain triggers the fight or flight function. This Harvard article explains the science. In summary: “After the amygdala sends a distress signal, the hypothalamus activates the sympathetic nervous system by sending signals through the autonomic nerves to the adrenal glands.” Once flight or flight is activated, behavior is inherently altered.

Source: Harvard.edu

This response is not something any of us can control. For example, studies have shown that that when a superior and a subordinate are sitting quiet in a room together, the amygdala of the subordinate begins sending distress signals, even when the two people have been personal friends for many years.

Through the magic of evolution, as leaders our mere presence introduces a subconscious fear! In turn, a leaders words and and behavior either amplifies that fear, or calms it. As a leader, everything you communicate and every action you take either builds a culture of fear, or builds a culture of safety. Being conscious of this is the first step in creating a culture of safety.

Stop fooling yourself

Most humans (especially engineers) under-estimate the complexity of tasks. If you want to nerd out, you can read all about it in the Planning Fallacy study. Compounding the problem, these inherently flawed bottoms-up estimates get condensed even further in order to meet tops-down, business-driven deadlines. As a result, we often end up with project timelines that are either unachievable or require super human efforts to complete. Impossible timelines demotivate teams and erode their trust in leadership.

Source: EveryDayPsych.com

Win more

Another interesting study, The Power of Small Wins, reveals that a sense of making progress leads to happy employees. And finally, there is a surprising amount to be learned from the psychology of gamification. In short, our brains REALLY like to win.

With all of that in mind, why would we continue to create project plans and goals that result in failure after failure? What good does it do to create a schedule that appears to meet expected deadlines, when the confidence in the schedule is utterly low? Wouldn’t it be more effective to encourage our teams to under commit and over deliver, creating a series of micro-wins?

In the organizations I have run team members do not get punished communicating honest project timelines, nor for missing project deadlines. The organization is grounded in a culture of experimentation, continuous learning and small cycle times (i.e. lots of wins). And it seems to work. Over the last 18 months the organization has seen a 150% improvement in predictability and 30% increase in value delivered.

How to get started

Promote experimentation

• Make experimentation a part of your change control process
• Demonstrate to your organization that the leadership team is also practicing experimentation

Embrace failure

• If you or your leadership team makes a mistake, broadly communicate those failures and what was learned
• Don’t just allow failure within teams, praise it and widely share what was learned from the failure

Change project planning and goal-setting processes

• Ask teams to under commit and over deliver
• Use empirical data when planning commitments
• Categorize commitments into three categories: high confidence, some confidence, low confidence, based on said data
• Measure and report on team say/do ratio
• Inspect goal setting practices; are your goals actually motivating your workforce?

My final piece of advice is to focus on hiring high integrity, intelligent, team players. Employees with these characteristics naturally want to win and will hold themselves and their peers accountable.

Benefits

1. More honest work estimates
2. Higher quality work
3. Improved productivity
4. Happier employees
5. Increased innovation
6. ….which leads to improved predictability!

Pitfalls

1. Over-rotating to eliminate fear, losing a sense of accountability
2. Allowing the same failure to repeat without intervention
3. Allowing leadership behavior that is inconsistent with the desired culture

Let’s discuss

What are some ways that your organization is eliminating a culture of fear?