Does Your Organisation Run on Fear?
Overbearing and oppressive leadership can make
people afraid of failure, destroy initiative and even cause unethical
behaviours within the enterprise.
In 2013, the US Air Force realised that over 20
percent of the nuclear officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base cheated on their
certification exam. Many other officers knew about the problem but did not
report it. The root cause for this dangerous behavior was a culture of fear
that led launch officers to believe they had to receive perfect test scores to
get promoted.
Fear is not risk-management. In fact, it is
quite the opposite. Fear kills initiative and pro-social behaviors. It renders
your smart, talented people useless. It suffocates innovation and undermines
your future growth. Paradoxically, the business becomes more risky, as critical
conversations are either avoided or under-addressed.
Symptoms
The amygdala - the part of our brain that serves
as our internal panic-button - can be triggered by both internal and
external sources. The cues can range from the macro to the micro, from the
impending entry of an aggressive competitor to the “dirty looks” made by your
peers as you’re communicating your best ideas. For many people, the main source
of fear lies closer to home, in the shape of the tyrannical leader. This can be
typified by the phrase, “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.”
Naturally, you often get neither until it is too late.
Whatever the source of the anxiety may be, there
is a predictable pattern of characteristics that define a fearful organisation:
• An
absence of frank and open dialogue. For example, when important conversations
happen either before or after meetings, but everyone remains silent during the
official discussion.
• A
resistance to participate, for fear of being ridiculed, overlooked or “shot
down”.
• Only
notional alignment (“lip-service”) on action plans, underpinned by a collective
belief that those plans will be ineffective anyway.
• A
partial or total reluctance to pass any bad news upwards.
• A
culture of “going through the motions” without any real engagement; and
• A
focus on salient but unlikely catastrophic outcomes.
The Solutions
So, how can we mitigate the effect of fear?
1. Emphasise Importance of
Executive Level Collaboration
Screen directors and executives for their
emotional intelligence. Leaders who regularly display emotional outbursts or
are bent on crushing internal dissent impose a cost on the organisation. For
example, the accounting scandals at the turn of the century involved a litany
of charismatic but hard-nosed CEOs such as Richard Scrushy or “Chainsaw Al”
Dunlap.
Develop a culture in which the leadership can be
challenged. After the Korean Air Flight 801 crash, the airline company
implemented a training program to soften an authoritarian-hierarchical culture
that prevented the co-pilot and crew from speaking up, even in a life and death
situation.
2. Track the Fear Radar
Discuss the topic of fear at high-level
meetings. Specifically evaluate and address the potential impact that
fear-driven behaviours could have on key inter-personal business relationships,
information flow, and timely decision making, especially during turbulent market
conditions and business crises.
3. Choose Knowledge over
Retribution – Discover the Diamonds
Focus on Leading Indicators – Facilitate
organisational dialogues where individuals feel safe to openly highlight and
discuss near-threats and near-misses. These are situations and events that may
not have resulted in failure but had the potential to do so. An example is the
training of supervisors to lead real-time risk discovery sessions.
Conduct no blame-attached business post mortems.
For example, many hospitals implement a no fault review of what went wrong
after a patient death to elicit suggestions for process improvements.
4. Speak the Truth - Encourage
Authentic Dialogue
As a leader, set the tone by being upfront about
the issues. Specifically recognise the concerns that individuals may have and
admit when you do not have the answer to a question. Celebrate the successes
but acknowledge the failures and the threats.
Spark Innovation by establishing a “shark tank”
for employees to pitch their best ideas.
5. Reward What’s Right -
Optimise the reward system.
Design Incentives with the brain in mind - don’t
use overly powerful incentives. Research in neuro-science has shown that when
the reward is too high, the brain reframes the hope of receiving a reward into
the fear of losing it.
Moderate the frequency of evaluation. Some
professional partnerships review their junior associates on a weekly basis and
dangle the threat of termination in front of them.
Naturally, when junior associates become senior,
they continue with this approach.
Design Key Performance Indicators with a
behavioural component to deter individuals from focusing exclusively on results
at all cost for the fear of missing the objectives.
The Pixar Way
An organisation at the forefront of this process
is Pixar, the creators of box office hits such as Toy Story or Inside
Out. It operates in a high uncertainty environment that runs on
larger-than-life personalities, cutting-edge creativity and fickle audiences.
The need for critical appraisal, straight talk and operating beyond egos
becomes paramount.
Pixar created the “Brain Trust” as a sounding
board at the developmental stage for large budget movies. Consisting of a
loosely structured group of fellow movie directors, the role of mentor and
mentee are regularly swapped. The Brain Trust does not have any power and every
member understands mistakes will be made. Thus, sharp discussions do not carry
penalty or stigma. Directors realise that this is about the process, not about
them or their movie. This makes the Brain Trust particularly effective in
pushing Pixar to release really innovative and successful movies.
A question worth considering is, “What could be
the equivalent of the ‘Brain Trust’ in your business and what performance
benefits could it bring?”
Gilles
Hilary, INSEAD Professor of
Accounting and Control and
Vip Vyas ,
Managing Director Alchimie Asia | February 11, 2016
Read
more at
http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/does-your-organisation-run-on-fear-4520?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=7f0a2d2905-18_Feb_mailer2_18_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e079141ebb-7f0a2d2905-249840429#eyR88KJUFgbyiDxs.99
No comments:
Post a Comment