THE LAB

I recently came across an article on BNET that drew my attention:  Fixing the Language of “Pass the Buck”. Here is a quick excerpt of some key thoughts Jeffrey Pfeffer puts forth:

Passive voice and sentence structure that diffuses responsibility just infuriate me…. A phrase like “customer service has decreased” leaves those responsible for the decisions that resulted in poorer customer service mysteriously unidentified.

Whether or not you believe the specific assertions about the economy put forth by Pfeffer in this article, I think everyone can step away from this article reminded that responsibility and truth in language as well as in action are paramount.  It has never been good enough to blame those who came before of us.  In order to move forward and create stronger governments, businesses, products, programs or policies, we have to not only move forward with transparency, but also own up to mistakes when we make them.  It seems to me that thus far our very human desires to be successful, to be right, to avoid failure, have lead us down troublesome paths.

When I sent him this article, my father wrote back one quick line to me: “Truth is pretty simple in concept; it’s amazing how much time and effort are spent by some trying to duck it.”

I love my dad for many reasons – one of them is for quick, simple thoughts like this. It resonates well with Pfeffer’s post: we waste time and energy on avoiding the truth or trying to spin scenarios into something better than they are. How much more efficient and effective could we be, if  we owned up to the reality of our situations and (gasp) asked for advice when we needed it? Couldn’t we progress faster and more sustainably as a community if we allowed a bit more room for honesty?

My dad’s words brought me back to a presentation I saw at SXSWi 2009 called “Tips for How to Make Ideas Happen.”  In this presentation, Scott Belsky highlighted one of the most important roles of a team is to listen to it’s “immune system” when moving forward on projects or ideas.  If members of the team have a hard time with a project or do not think it is worth moving forward, it is important to create a culture of listening to that “immune system” to cultivate better ideas. Belsky asserted that listening to that immune system and addressing complexities when they arise is one of the best ways to create ideas that are worth launching; if it doesn’t seem like a good idea in concept, it likely won’t be a good idea once it’s launched.  Best to address an immune system issue, diagnose it, and see how to strengthen the system again.

How does this relate? An effective team immune system requires ownership of mistakes and an allowance of honesty. Encouraging a healthy team immune system churns out smarter, more sustainable ideas.

In sum: culture of honesty + healthy team immune system = stronger ideas = less mistakes we have to clean up after later.

Spending time and energy battling the truth only gets us into more battles and stalls movement forward.  We wind up spinning in place instead of moving forward.

Do you have some examples of owning up to your mistakes?  Have you raised doubts about a project or program moving forward and had it strengthen the process?

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