Making a “Brilliant Mistake” — and Finding Success in Failures

Are mistakes something to be avoided at all costs?  Absolutely not, according to author Paul Schoenmaker…

Schoenmaker, a professor at Wharton’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation, has recently published Brilliant Mistakes:  Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure.   In this book, Schoenmaker points-out that many so-called “colossal” mistakes have actually allowed companies to find new technologies, uncover untapped markets, develop completely new projects — and, in some cases, have even allowed a company to revolutionize itself.

In his book, Schoenmaker illustrates how a long list of inventions — including ATM machines, organic food, and tobacco-free cigarettes — were judged as major failures at the time, but eventually proved to be brilliant conceptualizations.   Schoenmaker states that there are many ideas floating around in corporate America that are being dismissed as foolish — but that are likely to be regarded as similarly brilliant in the future.

Schoenmaker argues that leaders need to focus on creating a corporate culture that allows for productive mistakes to occur.  Indeed, a leader (or a corporate culture) that is punitive about mistakes — or that shortchanges the importance of creating innovative approaches to problems, even if the approach is not successful — will soon find themselves suffering from an innovation gap.

For both managers and leaders, Schoenmaker suggests that there are two different ways of profiting from mistakes:

• Being open to learning from professional and/or personal errors to identify new ways forward
• Deliberately making mistakes — or challenging convention wisdom — as a way to speed-up learning in your organization

Leaders can use Brilliant Mistakes to change their views about the merits of making mistakes, and will also see numerous business examples of where mistakes have been used to an advantage by gifted leaders.  Leaders will also get a sense of what types of mistakes “to” make.

Coinciding with the release of his book, the Wharton School has also announced the formation of a “Brilliant Mistakes Contest”, where participants will be encouraged to share a personal or business mistake, describe what was learned from it, and discuss how it opened new opportunities.

Time to End the Performance Review?

Is it time to end workplace reviews and the so-called performance management process?  The answer is “yes”, according to UCLA professor Samuel Culbert.

Culbert — who published 2011’s “Get Rid of the Performance Review!  How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on Getting Results That Really Matter” claims that companies practicing performance previews — not reviews — will get the best results.

By a performance preview, Culbert means a joint goal-setting session between employees and managers that sets performance expectations up-front, and then positions the supervisor as an ongoing resource to discuss progress, to help overcome performance obstacles, and to provide regular feedback on performance.   With this future-focused approach, an emphasis is placed on supervisor and subordinate working together as partners to achieve objectives, each with a vested interest in success.   Specifically, this discussion should focus on how the supervisor and subordinate will partner together even more effectively in the future than they have in the past.

Culbert claims that these performance previews should replace the tradition performance review, which is a top-down, one-sided discussion where managers discuss past performance with subordinates.   According to Culbert, the typical performance review is subjective, focuses on past situations that cannot be changed, and typically discourage input from subordinates.

But what about poor performers who need to be removed from the organization?  Culbert argues that adopting the performance preview model will actually facilitate more straight-talk discussions about poor performers, and will actually expedite the process of dealing with poor performers.   Of course, he sees the performance preview approach as minimizing the actual number of poor performers in an organization.

Culbert notes that in order to be successful, such performance previews need to embedded in the overall corporate culture of the organization — and that higher-level managers need to lead by example in incorporating this approach.  Furthermore, individual employees need to take responsibility for their own development under such a system, and employees also need to solicit feedback on their performance throughout the year.

Carlos Ghosn’s Success = Not Speaking Japanese

Carlos Ghosn had to face skeptics — and deal with a shaky alliance between two car companies — when he became CEO of combined operations between Renault and Nissan.   He posted an article in Business Week (December 12, 2011 edition) where he reflected on the factors that allowed him to be successful in this endeavor.

Ghosn left Renault in 1999 and moved to Japan to revive Nissan.  Brazilian-born and a citizen of France, Ghosn had little in common with Nissan’s Japanese leadership team.   In addition, Ghosn claims that every single change that was needed at Nissan went against everything that the Japanese valued about their company.

Given the scope of change that Ghosn felt was needed — and given the long-standing practices that he sought to change all at once — it may well be that his lack of understanding of the Japanese language was a key to his success.  By not understanding the language, Ghosn was immune from hearing exactly what his Japanese counterparts were saying about him.   He actually sees this communication “barrier” as being a key ingredient in his success.

By not being able to understand what was being said about him, Ghosn was more emboldened to make the substantive changes needed at Nissan.   According to his Business Week article, Ghosn points-out that while Nissan wanted results, they did not want change.  Being polite, his Japanese counterparts would not directly disagree with any of his decisions, but would instead find work-arounds (or propose something else) so as to avoid needed changes.

In the end, Ghosn claims that he found the sense of commitment common to the Japanese people to be an important ingredient to his success as leader at Nissan.   Specifically, once Ghosn made clear his personal commitment to Nissan’s success, he found that his Japanese leadership team was much more aligned with his overall direction for the company.

Even when having to pursue objectives that were totally contrary to Japanese culture — such as reducing headcount in a culture that values lifetime employment, or challenging seniority in a culture that respects those older than yourself — Ghosn was able to engender support because others could sense his personal commitment to Nissan’s success.

Finally, Ghosn claims that it was important for him to not completely ignore his earlier responsibilities at Renault as he pursued his work at Nissan.  As CEO of both companies, Ghosn had real responsibilities to both companies — and given the amount of his time required by Nissan, it would have been easy for Renault employees to be jealous or resentful of the time and resources being consumed by their partner company.  Despite this, Ghosn claims to have been “fair and even” in his treatment of both companies, and now that Nissan has experienced a major turn-around in recent years, he is spending most of his time dealing with the Renault brand.

Do Millenials Shun One-On-One Mentoring?

Are millennials shunning the traditional one-on-one mentoring model in favor of developing a broad series of different types of mentors?   The answer appears to be “yes”, based on a recent article in Blomberg Businessweek.

Writing in the March 18 edition of the magazine, Marina Khidekel writes that for many millennials, being paired with a single mentor to guide their career development is as old-fashioned as a “three martini lunch”.  Embedded in this mindset is the idea that a young professional will serve in a wide variety of roles — in a wide variety of organizations — which necessitates a much more broad-based, mentoring “board of directors” who can serve different roles as needed through the course of one’s career.

In addition, many of the mentoring “relationships” that are developed by millennials are more likely to resemble a Twitter conversation or Facebook post, as opposed to the long-term, “deep” relationships that were the norm in the past.   These relationship tend to be short-termed and informal — and they also tend to end before the relationship becomes a “chore” to either mentor or mentee.

Citing numerous studies, Khidekel points-out that while structured, mandatory mentoring programs are still common in large companies, many firms are experimenting with other forms of mentoring.    Popular options include team mentoring or peer mentoring, where groups of like-minded individuals gather to share advice with each other.  So-called “reverse” mentoring involves pairing older workers with younger employees as away of ensuring that older employees remain up-to-date with emerging issues and new technology.   Finally, “speed mentoring” somewhat resembles speed dating — with mentees working in short bursts with a wide variety of mentors, each of whom can supply targeted career and functional/technical advice.

While it may be premature to declare the traditional model of mentoring “dead”, organizations are encouraged to note that millennials may not see such traditional arrangements as entirely satisfactory.   The article points out that millennials not only place less credence on the experience of their older counterparts, only 2% of millennial respondents in a recent survey indicated that a formal mentor was their greatest source of career guidance or support (spouses/partners and parents actually received much higher ratings).   Many millennials feels as though they can contribute at a high level now — so waiting in lines, or waiting for a promotion via the corporate hierarchy — can seem like a foreign concept to them.

Mentors have their own issues with millennial mentees, as well — ranging from providing feedback on the inappropriateness of texting or using a Smartphone during a conversation, and the importance of adhering to schedules and deadlines.  The most common gripe of mentors?    Waiting for days for millennials to respond to emails…

Organizations are encouraged to consider more formal mentoring arrangements for the early stages of career development (on-boarding new hires in a way to ensure they have broad exposure to the organization, for example), but then are also encouraged to incorporate other mentoring practices to meet the later career needs of millenials.  Such a hybrid approach is likely to do a better job of meeting the needs of both millennials and their mentors.

60% of Employers Have Trouble Attracting Critical Skill Workers

In a market full of job seekers, the majority of North American employers have trouble attracting critical skill workers, according to the 2011/2012 Towers Watson Talent Management and Rewards Study.   This study included data collected from 316 organizations in a wide variety of industries.

According to the study, this problem is seen as continuing beyond the economic recovery, which will make the retention of specific employee groups a top business priority.

In tough economic times, it is important for employers to identify the critical talent in their organization and ensure that they are rewarded for their contributions in a way that is important to them.    The study identifies critical skill employees as those who possess skills the organization needs most to compete, and those whose contributions contribute most to the organization’s overall success.   While this may seem an obvious area of need, the study found that only 44% of organizations identify such critical skill employees.

Employers continue to react to economic uncertainty by tightening merit budgets while expecting more work hours from their employees.  However, these expectations can affect the work/life balance of critical skill employees, which can lead to lower retention of these employees.

The study identified three key principles that are related to an organization’s ability to retain critical skill employees:

1. Integration — this involves ensuring that all reward and talent management programs align with each other, as well as with the overall business strategy of the organization.   This involves ensuring that the critical skills needed by the organization are understood and documented, and that systems and methods exist for recognizing and rewarding these skills
2. Segmentation — this involves crafting different reward and recognition systems for different parts of the organization.  Specifically, by understanding which employees have the most impact on the bottom line and constructing programs to reward and retain these employees, organizations can maximize their return on investment and be successful.
3. Agility — this refers to the organization’s ability to quickly develop plans and strategies to meet changing business or economic conditions .  Examples might include flexible benefits, comp time, alternative work schedules, or telecommuting.

The study found that organizations following the above principles were over twice as likely to be seen as high-performing companies.  Such organizations are seen as having less trouble attracting and retaining critical skill employees.

An overview of this study was provided in the January 2012 edition of Florida Trend magazine.  A full copy of the research study is available by going to towerswatson.com/research/5563.