Mike Grossman, six-time Silicon Valley CEO and McKinsey alumnus, author of Failure Is An Option: Reflections of a Silicon Valley CEO, was interviewed recently. In the interview, he refutes the notion that hard work alone determines success. He argues that several of the Baldrige core values and concepts are also what are key and truly define effective leadership: integrity, adaptability, and intelligent risk. He also advocates learning from failure.
Integrity
Baldrige talks about integrity as the central characteristic of the core value and concept of Ethics and Transparency. The Framework expects that senior leaders will serve as role models of ethical behavior. On site visits, I’ve asked CEOs, “When was the last time someone told you news that you didn’t want to hear? How did you respond?” The best responses revealed a humility, a need to be transparent about the situation, and quick disclosure and resolution. Some of the situations were minor in nature – a minor exchange of personal health information (PHI) – while others involved millions of dollars in repayment for miscoded services. But the CEOs expressed no regret for the resolution they implemented. And they shared the lessons learned with their employees and affected stakeholders.
These ethics and transparency are the foundation for your culture and values. Grossman advises, “Build a great cultural environment because if people really love working for the company, adversity strikes – and it always does – people will stay.”
Adaptability
Adaptability is a lot like the Baldrige Core Values and Concepts of Agility and Resilience. “Agility requires a capacity for rapid change and for flexibility in operations. Organizational resilience is the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and recover from disasters, emergencies, and other disruptions.” In situations where adaptability is required, there are likely to be some failures. But how thoroughly those failures are investigated, root cause(s) determined, and corrective actions put in place support the future capability to withstand the same or similar circumstances.
“Disruptive events are occurring more frequently, triggered by economic or political upheaval or stress, major weather or health events, social or societal demands, or innovative technologies or product introductions.” It’s building agility and resilience in your organization that will help you endure and succeed in the face of them.
Intelligent Risk
“Taking intelligent risks requires a tolerance for failure and an expectation that innovations are not achieved by initiating only successful endeavors. At the outset, organizations must invest in potential successes while realizing that some will lead to failure.” (from the Baldrige Excellence Framework Glossary)
When was the last time you or your organization failed after taking what had seemed to be an intelligent risk? If you can’t recall, then you are probably risk-averse and may be missing opportunities.
On the other hand, what is a significant failure for you personally or your organization? Grossman asks, “Looking back, what emotion stays with you the most?” And his personal reflections offer some intelligent insights.
The jobs of CEOs and other senior executives are not well understood by many or discussed much. Grossman shares, “The traditional Hollywood narrative would be that a person has a transformative idea. Things go well, then they hit adversity, then they get through the adversity, and there’s enormous success. But that’s not really how life works. Life bounces around.”
I had a chemistry professor in college who once said, “No experiment is ever a failure; it can always serve as a bad example.” And I learned that in life, in addition to in chemistry class, that was good advice.
Organizational Learning from Failure
Organizational Learning is another Baldrige Core Value and Concept. But as I reread the Glossary Definition, I was surprised to see that there was no reference regarding learning from failures. We see that with some of our clients when they experience the same problems over and over again. I worked for a boss in the past who would ask the person submitting a response to a complaint, “Would you bet your paycheck on this resolution? Will we never see this problem again?” His reasoning was that if you wouldn’t bet your paycheck, you weren’t 100% convinced that you understood the problem completely, and you weren’t confident that your solution would eliminate it.
Learning from failures ought to be a requirement. We (and maybe our customers and stakeholders) have already paid the price of the failure. Let’s at least get a good return on our investment by adding to our knowledge assets and identifying improvement opportunities.
Taking failure to a personal level, consider this. One of the hardest questions asked in interviews is, “What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?” In other words, what is your real passion that you haven’t pursued because of fear of failure? Let’s begin by viewing failure as something valuable to learn about our organizations and ourselves.
What have you learned from your last failure? And what are you going to do about it?
