Imagine yourself standing on a platform 75 feet above the ground. There is no safety net and in front of you a trapeze bar swings toward you. It’s time to leap. Do you?
- Or -
Imagine yourself reviewing your organization’s performance indicators. Your company is not doing well. Something needs to change. You have to relinquish some of your control and listen to what your employees and customers are telling you. Can they speak candidly about what is on their minds?
Both scenarios require risk.
Risk is a potential exposure to loss or injury. It creates fear of the unknown.
On the downside, fear of risk results in stagnation. This is because if people are penalized for calculated risk-taking, they become fearful of new ideas. On the upside, risk is the fuel behind change and implementing new ideas.
As a collaborative team value, the ability to take calculated and well-reasoned risks is a foundation for building an effective organization with the capacity to learn about itself, to expand and grow.
Peter Kline and Bernard Saunders, in their book, Ten Steps to a Learning Organization (1993, Great Ocean Publishers, Inc.) write about the paradigm shift that was occurring in the 1990’s and is still occurring today as the Industrial Age gives way to the Information Age. For many organizational leaders, making the shift feels like leaping to catch a trapeze. So many hesitate because they believe they will be left dangling in the air.
For one reason, with this shift a higher percentage of workers are required to make decisions on their own without management intervention. Instead of being passive extensions of production lines, their involvement and commitment is required. Accountability is expected and training in problem solving and decision making skill development is required. Many leaders resist letting go of control because they have not spent time and resources to train their employees. They are still stuck in the Industrial Age mindset, even though statistics show that a well informed leader, operating on their own information in new territory will make the correct decision less than 50% of the time. In today’s marketplace, these are not bankable odds.
For another reason, the new hope for North American businesses is their ability to draw the fullest amount of creativity and innovation from their employees. In order to do that, organizations have to supply their people with the necessary systems and tools. Kline and Saunders insist that progress towards a learning organization has to be an organizational transformation. This requires frame-breaking change where mistakes happen.
Therefore, organizations that fail to look at errors as just another step toward success lose a valuable market edge. They are not as responsive to external change -- such as the declining housing market or market competition -- as more innovative organizations.
As a result, when employees and customers are asked for their opinions, fear and denial often surface. Fear of accountability, of speaking out, of change and denial of those fears lead to paralysis and bureaucracy. Therefore, organizational fear has to be confronted on all levels from the custodian to the CEO. And, fear is directly correlated with the ability to risk.
Therefore, what behaviors damage the collaborative core value risk?
• Retaliation against people who make thoughtful decisions that result in a mistake
• Failure to clarify goals, procedures and expectations
• Criticism
• Fear of failure
• Perfectionism and over-analysis
What behaviors build risk?
• Performance feedback and coaching
• Establishing accountability and commitment at all levels of the organization
• Debriefing completed projects and developing improvement processes
• Recognizing honest mistakes are learning tools
Moderate risk-taking is a learnable skill as long as fear and threat of retaliation are absent. More importantly, risk-taking is an organizational attitude that is modeled throughout the organization, especially at the top.
Without risk being tolerated at the cultural level, many organizations penalize people for thinking. Likewise they fail to put into place the safety net that allows their organizations to make the leap. A good safety net requires structure, nurturing, minimum critical feedback and maximum constructive coaching, and encouragement for well-reasoned risk.
Risk: Making the leap - To learn more about this author, visit Dianne Crampton's Website.
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Dianne Crampton
(Visit Dianne's Website)
Dianne Crampton is an Executive Leadership
Coach and Team Building Consultant and
creator of the TIGERS team development
model. For the past twenty years she has
helped leaders and teams achieve goals
with high levels of collaboration and
teamwork.
Crampton is a published author. Her
contribution to Working Together:
Diversity As Opportunity was endorsed by
Stephen Covey. She has written for trade
magazines. Merrill Lynch nominated her
business for Inc. Magazine’s regional
small business and entrepreneurial awards.
Her work with Native Americans was
recognized at a United Nations sponsored
conference in 1994.
The TIGERS model passed two rigorous
validation studies in 1992 and 1994. The
TIGERS Survey is able to measure and track
team development over time.
Dianne is also the creator and distributor
of the TIGERS Team Wheel game. This game
helps groups identify behaviors that build
collaborative groups and behaviors that
cause conflict, morale problems,
production failures, and
misunderstandings.
For more information, or to subscribe to
TigerTracks, a free monthly leadership and
team newsletter go to www.core
values.com
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