January 18, 2009
Career Couch
Making the Most of Your Workplace Mistakes By PHYLLIS KORKKI
Q. You realize that you made a terrible mistake at work. Your first instinct is to deny that it happened or to cover it up. Then you feel angry and defensive, and want to blame other people. Then you want to hide. Are these reactions normal?
A. It is only human for people who have made a mistake to have any or all of these initial reactions.
A mistake can contradict your view of yourself as an effective worker, creating cognitive dissonance, said Carol Tavris, a social psychologist and co-author of "Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)." You think, "On this dimension where I pride myself on my abilities, I screwed up? Not possible," Dr. Tavris said.
To reconcile these opposing views, the mind tries various forms of self-justification. Dr. Tavris said that this is "the protective process by which we get to keep seeing ourselves as ethical, smart and competent, and reject, ignore, dismiss or minimize the evidence that we were wrong."
That's when the lies, the blame and the defensiveness erupt. But these self-protective responses don't help you or your organization because they block any understanding of what went wrong, she said.
Not only that, but covering up one error can lead to more — and bigger — mistakes, until you are entangled in a mess you never intended, she said.
One key to handling errors effectively is to recognize they aren't necessarily a reflection of your native abilities and intelligence, Dr. Tavris said. Once you have separated the action from you as a person, you can work quickly to correct the error and move on.
Q. Still, you can't help thinking, "How could I have let such a stupid thing happen?"
A. "Mistakes will happen; that's a given," especially in complex work environments, said Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School.
In any job that requires continuing thought and judgment, we need to be "aware of the huge potential of things to go wrong," Professor Edmondson said, because "we all can handle only so much cognitively at a time."
Because layoffs have shrunk the staffing of many businesses, "we need to recognize that we're more vulnerable than usual to mistakes," she said. "We should be encouraging people to speak up sooner rather than later."
Q. How do you start dealing with your mistake?
A. First, go to the people who are affected by it and apologize, Professor Edmondson said. Then work with them to correct the situation and come up with changes you can make so the error won't happen again. The sooner you come clean, the better — both for your peace of mind and the good of the organization.
"Stand up, turn around, do it now," she said.
Acknowledging a mistake is hard because of the fear of being perceived as stupid or incompetent, Dr. Tavris said, but keeping it inside can be an enormous psychological burden. "People are often surprised to learn that when they admit the mistake, not only do they feel better, but the response is often much better than they expected," she said.
Q. Can your manager affect the way you deal with your mistake?
A. Your manager and company can make all the difference in the world in the way mistakes are handled. If your manager is the type who will become angry at you for a mistake, you will be less likely to disclose it — and that wastes valuable time, Professor Edmondson said.
The best companies make it a policy to show gratitude and reward employees for revealing their mistakes, Dr. Tavris said. Workers and managers need to view a mistake "as an inevitable human step on the path to improvement," she said.
David D. Woods, a professor of human systems integration at Ohio State University, said managers need to make clear that "it's more important to share the information than it is to identify the culprit."
Occasionally, if a person makes many mistakes and cannot reduce them, a manager may realize that "this person is not well placed in this role," Professor Edmondson said. "That's not fun but it is a leadership job." Still, she said, she has found that this situation is rare.
Q. Can a mistake be a sign of a larger problem in your organization?
A. It's possible. You may view your error in very personal terms, but it may reflect a fundamental flaw in a company, a system or a product.
Professor Woods gave an example of someone who inadvertently hits "Reply to all" in an e-mail message, sending confidential information to a large group. This could well reflect poor design of the e-mail system, with "Reply" and "Reply to all" placed too closely together, he said.
Other examples of flaws, he said, are a breakdown in communication among departments, a fear among subordinates to question higher-ups and a failure to incorporate crosschecks — the way airline workers do for safety reasons — or checklists.
See a mistake as an opportunity, Professor Woods said. All of these events, he said, "are opportunities for the system to learn and change."
E-mail: ccouch@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/jobs/18career.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;making%20the%20most=&%2334;=&scp=5&pagewanted=print
http://snipurl.com/by5e2
Showing posts with label Leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leadership. Show all posts
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time By REID HASTIE
January 18, 2009
Preoccupations
Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time By REID HASTIE
THE meeting spills over into its second hour. We are discussing an employee productivity initiative. At the moment, our most talkative committee member is describing a similar effort at another company. Her descriptions are peppered with self-consciously clever turns of phrase and images.
Another participant chimes in with the idea that we need some kind of incentive system to reward employees for behaviors we want from them. This is the same solution he offers for every problem, at every meeting.
Then, our self-appointed parliamentarian interjects a long story about a previous institutional effort — to make the point that our team is not the proper entity to recommend the kinds of changes we are proposing.
I, meanwhile, contribute nothing useful.
Finally, the woman who set the meeting calls it quits and tells us we'll continue the discussion next week. We drift back to our offices wondering what went wrong and how to make up for the wasted time.
This meeting occurred many years ago, but others that are distressingly similar happen at companies everywhere, every day.
Part of the problem at such meetings is that the leader has not set clear objectives or an agenda, and didn't assign pre-meeting preparation tasks. Instead, the leader seems to hope that magic will occur, producing a serendipitous solution to some of the problems addressed. Of course, that doesn't happen. As a general rule, meetings make individuals perform below their capacity and skill levels.
This doesn't mean we should always avoid face-to-face meetings — but it is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones.
The main reason we don't make meetings more productive is that we don't value our time properly. The people who call meetings and those who attend them are not thinking about time as their most valuable resource.
In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don't apply easily to time.
Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can't earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.
Probably most important, we are blind to lost time opportunities. When we choose where to invest our time, as opposed to where to invest money, we are more likely to neglect what else we could have done with it.
And, once meetings are over, we don't effectively assign responsibility for a bad meeting or take personal responsibility as we should. Sure, someone called the meeting, but we all leave it unhappy and blaming everyone, including ourselves. Psychologists call this "diffusion of responsibility" and one consequence is that no one thinks it's his or her job to fix it the next time.
I USED to be the disengaged participant — one who had good ideas about how to solve a problem or conduct a meeting, but didn't contribute. I now take a more active role, aiming to make meetings more effective. Here are simple principles I use.
•
Whoever calls a meeting should be explicit about its objectives. This means specifying tangible goals and assigning responsibility for creating, summarizing and reporting on them. Ask yourself this question: Specifically, what do we want accomplished when we walk out of the room?
•
Everyone should think carefully about the opportunity costs of a meeting: How many participants are really needed? (Almost all business teams and committees are too big.) How long should the meeting last? Set a definite ending time. Anyone who doubts that the meeting is necessary, or thinks it's too long, should speak up.
•
After productive or unproductive meetings, assign credit or blame to the person in charge. Then, if people have track records of leading ineffective meetings, don't let them lead future sessions. When their expertise is essential, make them subordinate to an effective meeting leader.
Yes, I know that some benefits of meetings aren't obvious if we look only at tangible progress toward organizational objectives. The person who called the meeting described above was probably interested in more than just finding definite solutions to problems she posed for discussion. She was interested in what solutions the group could generate at first, and maybe wanted to float some of her own half-baked solutions for initial evaluation before thinking harder.
Even if problem-solving is the objective, meetings can also serve other functions: sometimes, they can communicate a pre-ordained solution, make sure that there are no fatal flaws in it and give those who are unhappy with it a chance to voice their dissatisfaction.
And many meetings serve a cultural function, allowing participants to renew social connections, establish relationships, verify the social order and deepen a sense of belonging. So, it's possible to justify a few of those too-long and apparently unproductive meetings by finding hidden payoffs.
But, please, don't just call a meeting and hope the magic happens. Take charge and take personal responsibility for meeting its objectives, whatever they are.
Reid Hastie is Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. E-mail:
preoccupations@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/jobs/18pre.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;=&%2334;meetings%20are%20a%20matter%20of%20precious%20time=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
http://snipurl.com/by565
Preoccupations
Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time By REID HASTIE
THE meeting spills over into its second hour. We are discussing an employee productivity initiative. At the moment, our most talkative committee member is describing a similar effort at another company. Her descriptions are peppered with self-consciously clever turns of phrase and images.
Another participant chimes in with the idea that we need some kind of incentive system to reward employees for behaviors we want from them. This is the same solution he offers for every problem, at every meeting.
Then, our self-appointed parliamentarian interjects a long story about a previous institutional effort — to make the point that our team is not the proper entity to recommend the kinds of changes we are proposing.
I, meanwhile, contribute nothing useful.
Finally, the woman who set the meeting calls it quits and tells us we'll continue the discussion next week. We drift back to our offices wondering what went wrong and how to make up for the wasted time.
This meeting occurred many years ago, but others that are distressingly similar happen at companies everywhere, every day.
Part of the problem at such meetings is that the leader has not set clear objectives or an agenda, and didn't assign pre-meeting preparation tasks. Instead, the leader seems to hope that magic will occur, producing a serendipitous solution to some of the problems addressed. Of course, that doesn't happen. As a general rule, meetings make individuals perform below their capacity and skill levels.
This doesn't mean we should always avoid face-to-face meetings — but it is certain that every organization has too many meetings, and far too many poorly designed ones.
The main reason we don't make meetings more productive is that we don't value our time properly. The people who call meetings and those who attend them are not thinking about time as their most valuable resource.
In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don't apply easily to time.
Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can't earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.
Probably most important, we are blind to lost time opportunities. When we choose where to invest our time, as opposed to where to invest money, we are more likely to neglect what else we could have done with it.
And, once meetings are over, we don't effectively assign responsibility for a bad meeting or take personal responsibility as we should. Sure, someone called the meeting, but we all leave it unhappy and blaming everyone, including ourselves. Psychologists call this "diffusion of responsibility" and one consequence is that no one thinks it's his or her job to fix it the next time.
I USED to be the disengaged participant — one who had good ideas about how to solve a problem or conduct a meeting, but didn't contribute. I now take a more active role, aiming to make meetings more effective. Here are simple principles I use.
•
Whoever calls a meeting should be explicit about its objectives. This means specifying tangible goals and assigning responsibility for creating, summarizing and reporting on them. Ask yourself this question: Specifically, what do we want accomplished when we walk out of the room?
•
Everyone should think carefully about the opportunity costs of a meeting: How many participants are really needed? (Almost all business teams and committees are too big.) How long should the meeting last? Set a definite ending time. Anyone who doubts that the meeting is necessary, or thinks it's too long, should speak up.
•
After productive or unproductive meetings, assign credit or blame to the person in charge. Then, if people have track records of leading ineffective meetings, don't let them lead future sessions. When their expertise is essential, make them subordinate to an effective meeting leader.
Yes, I know that some benefits of meetings aren't obvious if we look only at tangible progress toward organizational objectives. The person who called the meeting described above was probably interested in more than just finding definite solutions to problems she posed for discussion. She was interested in what solutions the group could generate at first, and maybe wanted to float some of her own half-baked solutions for initial evaluation before thinking harder.
Even if problem-solving is the objective, meetings can also serve other functions: sometimes, they can communicate a pre-ordained solution, make sure that there are no fatal flaws in it and give those who are unhappy with it a chance to voice their dissatisfaction.
And many meetings serve a cultural function, allowing participants to renew social connections, establish relationships, verify the social order and deepen a sense of belonging. So, it's possible to justify a few of those too-long and apparently unproductive meetings by finding hidden payoffs.
But, please, don't just call a meeting and hope the magic happens. Take charge and take personal responsibility for meeting its objectives, whatever they are.
Reid Hastie is Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. E-mail:
preoccupations@nytimes.com.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/jobs/18pre.html?sq=&st=cse&%2334;=&%2334;meetings%20are%20a%20matter%20of%20precious%20time=&scp=1&pagewanted=print
http://snipurl.com/by565
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