Patrick Adams  00:22

the United States. Join us as we bring you guests and experiences of Lean practitioners from all over the world. Hello and welcome to Episode 10 of the lean solutions podcast. My name is Patrick Adams, and today we’re going to be talking about failure, or how safe is it for your employees to fail? One of my favorite books is titled, it’s your ship management techniques from the best damn ship in the Navy. Captain Michael abershoff is a former Navy commander, and he’s the author of the book. He tells of the story of organizational transformation and innovative leadership in the US military. Abershoff took command of the worst performing navy ship in the Pacific fleet, and then he made it number one in just 12 months, right, with the very same crew. So I mean, that is that is unheard of, right? In 12 months, the very same team that was titled as the worst performing navy ship in the Pacific Fleet, he made it number one, interesting, right? I think if you have not read this book, my suggestion is to go out and find this book and be sure that you read it in his book. Abrashov says, short of these contingencies, the crew was authorized to make their own decisions. Now, if you know anything about the US military, this is definitely a different leadership tactic than the majority of military personnel. So this was very different for this crew than what they had been used to, but abershoff was stood behind the fact that he wanted his team, his crew, to be able to make their own decisions. Okay, wow, right. Can you imagine how difficult it must have been for him to hand over decision making authority to his crew, to trust them enough to be able to hand over this decision making authority. Do you think that he also believed, when he handed over this decision making authority? Do you think that he also believed and trusted that they would make all the right decisions, absolutely not right? He knew, he knew that they would make mistakes. In fact, in the book, he continues, he says, Even if those decisions were wrong, I would stand behind them, hopefully they would learn from their mistakes, and the more responsibility they were given, the more they learned. Do you think abershoffs crew felt safe making decisions? You see, when they made the right decision, the captain celebrated with the entire crew, and when they made the wrong decision, well, he made sure that they learned something. So either way, the crew found success in making their own decisions one way or the other. So imagine being a sailor on the worst performing ship in the Navy. Or, if you want to imagine, you know, imagine yourself being a part, the part of a team, the worst performing team in the company, right? So as a sailor, as an 18 year old sailor, you determine that there’s a problem with the ship’s integrated bridge and navigation system, right? And again, within your company, imagine that you you found this very serious problem that you found and you needed to tell somebody right. So in the past, if you raised a problem to your senior chief or to your boss, to your manager, you were told there are experts to work on that stuff, stop complaining and get back to your job. Needless to say, if left unresolved, a problem like this one could lead on a Navy ship, it could lead to malfunction, it could lead to a collision, possibly or even potential death of crew members. When people work in a fear based culture, they tend to overlook things that should be addressed immediately, such as this problem right? So now on the flip side, let’s imagine being a sailor on the same ship. When Captain abershoff took command, abrashov told his crew that their top priority, number one priority was the safety and security of his people. But he didn’t just say it. He lived it. His behaviors showed that he stood behind this belief in number one priority being the safety and security of his people, to embed a mindset of safety. Doesn’t just take words, it takes action. The captain would personally inspect workspaces. He’d observe sailors performing their duties. He would even go down and quiz them on protocol. He would also participate even in safety seminars with his crew. Right he’d sit right in the same room and he’d listen and participate in the safety seminars. Any sailor could stop any process if they thought safety was being impaired. Any sailor also had a direct line to him to the captain if they felt their chain of command wasn’t sufficiently concerned, and Captain abershoff would stand behind them and support them, even if they made a bad decision. And the result of all of this, which you’re probably wondering, right, the result was only two minor incidents aboard down from 31 incidents in the preceding two years. So they went from 31 down to two minor incidents when Captain abershoff took command, amazing right? Companies cannot develop breakthrough processes if they’re not willing to encourage risk taking decision making and then learn from some subsequent mistakes. In traditional work environments, managers are expected to make most decisions and assume all responsibility. That’s been my experience, and what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced as a manager myself. How many problems, though, can one manager attend to? Right? I remember being pulled in 15 different directions, having to go to meetings and, you know, other things where there’s no way that I could handle all the problems myself. There’s no way that I could be accountable and and have to make every single decision, right? I had to rely on other people, right? But if I’m the only one, if there’s one manager that’s making decisions, how slow will the decision making process be in work environments where managers make all the decisions, employees definitely get frustrated, right? Because they they are dealing with the same problems over and over again. Managers don’t have the time to fully understand every situation, and therefore will either not make a decision fast enough, or they’ll make a hasty decision that could result in negative results. In contrast, in a continuous improvement culture, we we promote the engagement of everyone in decision making and responsibility, right? Just like Captain abershoff did, imagine how strong the organization would be if everyone was engaged in good root cause analysis and countermeasure implementation. In order for everyone to be fully engaged, however, they need to feel safe to to fail, right? When a reporter asked him how he felt, felt to fail 1000 times, Thomas Edison replied, I didn’t fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps. For Edison, failure was not just a piece of the process, but a requirement for success without the many challenges that he faced during the invention process, Edison would not have learned from his mistakes or ultimately brought a commercially viable light bulb to the world. Unfortunately, companies today tend to downplay failure. They deny its occurrence or experience people experience shame when others recognize it first, right? So where does this come from? Let’s, let’s think all the way back. I, you know, I have three kids, and you know, all of them play sports, but let’s think back to when we were in adolescent sports. Things were probably quite a bit different than they are today. For example, today, Little League organizers hand out participation trophies. Now, I know some some organizations are getting away from this, but little league organizers hand out participation trophies to all participants, rather than embracing the fact that some people win and others lose. It’s a fact of life. So what are adolescents learning about failure? By distorting this line between success and failure, these adolescent sports leagues and universities are impeding the development of these young people. I mean, put simply, today’s society. Today’s society is coddling future leaders and setting them up for later, more significant failure by not letting them experience failure early in life. If people haven’t experienced failure or have had maybe bad experiences with failure, they will be reluctant to try anything that could result possibly in failure. So if employees believe that a certain action will deliver a negative result, they may avoid taking that action. And if, on the other hand, they believe that the action will be positive, right, that they know that they will be celebrated if they make a good decision, or they’ll be celebrated, that they learn something if, if it’s not a positive, if it’s not positive, well, they’ll be far more easy. Easier to move forward with it. So taking action or not, taking action gives a result of one sort or the other. If employees don’t like the result they received when they made a decision to act, those results circle right back around to affect their beliefs, and more than likely, they won’t try it again. Creating a continuous improvement culture is about creating great workplaces that people love. Being a part of a workplace where people are able to use their brain power and feel supported, included and respected, a workplace where every single action delivers positive results, whether a celebration of of correct of a correct decision, or a celebration of something they learned by an incorrect decision like Edison, people need to believe that failure is a necessary part of success and risk is acceptable to get there. Hey, everybody, remember, keep it simple, keep it visual and continue to improve. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe this way. You’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please give us a review. Thank you so much. You.