Organizational Culture
Pizza Is For Winners
Celebrate success, not the appearance of success
How many times has your team or your organization celebrated false victories? What is a false victory, you ask? A false victory is a non-achievement; it is something that misses the mark but is yet somehow still talked about and promoted like it’s a resounding success. And it is dangerous!
Why Are False Victories Dangerous?
- They can hurt future decision making.
Like every brand of untruth, false victories distort reality, which can hurt future decision making. The collective goal of decisions made in an organization is to lead the organization toward successful outcomes: achieve milestone x, increase revenue by x within y months, lower operational cost x within y months, improve resiliency by x measurement within y months, etc. But, if the incentive for decisions that fail to meet their desired outcome is no different than the incentive for decisions that achieve their desired outcome then what incentive is there for decision makers to make decisions that benefit the organization? Indeed, this instead creates an incentive structure that encourages individual decision makers to make decisions that most benefit them as individuals, regardless of the overall impact to the organization.
2. They are demoralizing.
Every person on a team and every person in an organization wants to be successful. But nobody wants a participation trophy dressed up like a podium medal — nobody who cares about their work, anyway. It’s a hard thing to hear that your efforts weren’t good enough or that your team didn’t accomplish something that it set out to do. But you know what is even harder? Knowing that there is no difference between success and failure.
3. They aren’t real successes.
I remember a conversation I had with someone who reported to me once after we had the converse of a false victory happen: a diminished success. He said, “Why do we keep trying to produce high quality work? Why do we keep trying to help the organization meet its stated goals if it doesn’t matter?” My response was, “Because we are professionals and because it does matter to the right people.”
The point of that conversation is two fold: to further illustrate point #2 and to highlight that there is only one reality, whether it is preferred to fiction is beside the point. Case in point: you can claim all you want that your systems are recoverable within x time following an outage scenario. But when an outage scenario occurs and your systems aren’t recoverable within x time, it becomes painfully obvious that there is only one reality. And that reality can be a real SOB.
Avoiding The Reality Distortion Field
Both false victories and diminished successes are able to exist because the culture is such that results can be easily distorted and because there is an incentive to do so. These environments typically have one or more of the following traits.
Cultural Traits
- Failure is not well tolerated; poor psychological safety
If failure is not well tolerated then the people closest to the problems will not talk about them, those problems will rarely bubble up and the gap between the reality on the floor and the perception held by management will be wider than the Mariana Trench is deep. Creating a culture where problems are the adversary and people are the problem solvers takes continuous effort and motivated management. But, the pay off is that problems get recognized and solved instead of just not talked about.
It’s not a key result unless it has a number. -Marissa Mayer
2. Metrics are vague; not data-driven
If objectives are not bound to measurable results then they are open to interpretation. For example, let’s say you told your friends you were going to run in a marathon. One might think you were going to run 26.2 miles, and maybe that was your intention. However, let’s say you were unprepared to run 26.2 miles. So, instead you entered a 5k out of Marathon, FL that was conveniently called “The Marathon.”
Technically, you met your stated objective. But, because your objective was not tied to a specific measurable result, you were able to claim victory by achieving much less than the implicit scope of the objective. Instead, if you had claimed that you were going to run a 26.2 mile marathon race, a false victory would have been next to impossible — you would either run 26.2 miles or admit that you had fallen short of your objective.
3. Lack of stated principles & values
Amazon has their Leadership Principles. Salesforce has their Work Differently Principles. Teams and organizations should also have their own principles & values that clearly communicate what they value, how they work, how people treat each other, how decisions are made and how disagreements are resolved. An organization without principles and values is lost. And a lost organization’s motivation and purpose follows the loudest voice, which is usually the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion).
4. Lack of adherence to stated principles & values
I recall having a conversation with an executive in the past who said, “Just because someone in management says one thing and does the opposite, that doesn’t make them wrong.” Actually, that is the very definition of wrong, or at least the definition of dishonesty.
Principles and values are only as good as the people who uphold them. They are a mechanism for keeping everyone in the organization on the same page and accountable to each other. They can’t apply just to certain people. If everyone doesn’t value them, honor them and defend them then they effectively do not exist.
An Environment Grounded In Reality
Fortunately, there are ways to bring your organization back to reality if it has run astray. First and foremost, have your organization create a set of values and principles that are universally agreed upon. Organizations who embrace Agile might choose to start with the values and principles that define Agile and then add their own. Whatever you choose, make sure they clearly outline (1) the organization’s purpose (2) what the organization values (3) how people within the organization are expected to work together (4) how disagreements are resolved.
Next, work to establish psychological safety. People who are afraid to speak up will not speak up and as a consequence, problems will not surface. If problems are not surfaced, then they are never resolved. Moreover, everything seems like a success from a distance because only the most attractive part of the picture is visible.
Establishing a culture of psychological safety is not an easy feat. And it’s really not easy if you are not in a position of organizational authority. However, “not easy” does not equal “not possible.” Even people in positions of authority must ultimately derive their power from somewhere, and many like to claim that “trust” is that somewhere. Here’s where you can lead by example.
Stand up for yourself and for others. Do not allow yourself or others to be bullied, talked down to, dismissed or inappropriately silenced. If you are successful, you just might help bring some psychological safety into your organization. If you are not… well, I did say it was not going to be easy.
Finally, insist on a definition of success that includes specific metrics with every stated objective. If your organization does not do this already, it will be a tough ask. Why? Because those who benefitted from a system without real accountability may now be held accountable. They will likely see this as something that diminishes their power. That is why attaching specific metrics to objectives cannot work without a high degree of psychological safety in place.
Without psychological safety, playing fast and loose with objectives and associated results is left unchecked. Nobody wants to tell someone with more political clout than them that there is a problem if the consequence is that they are chastised or treated poorly. However, with psychological safety, raising concerns is protected. It’s no longer a you vs him situation; it’s an all of us vs problems situation.
Conclusion
Successes should be celebrated. But, failures are also important. Failures are how we learn. And, learning is how we improve. Dressing failures up like successes or worse, not being able to tell the difference between success and failure is a recipe for disaster and a sign of a dysfunctional organization. Besides, pizza tastes a lot better when you’ve earned it.
Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, please check out the Blu Flame Technologies Blog.
