Leadership Nudge™ – A BIAS FOR ACTION
This week’s Leadership Nudge is about creating an organization with a bias for action. It starts with our mind set when we come to work. What is our goal, are we focused on avoiding errors or achieving excellence?
Is our mind set focused on avoiding errors? Do we find ourselves thinking, “Hey I just want to avoid making a mistake?” There are many things that sound like avoiding mistakes. Do we hear or see words like:
We are going to reduce the number of accidents. And maybe we have a big poster that states the same.
We are going to minimize the variability on this process.
If our focus is all about avoiding errors, it creates a bias toward passivity. We know the best way to avoid errors is to not make any decisions.
Instead we want to have organizations where the mindset is focused on building something, on achieving greatness, on achieving excellence! We cannot achieve greatness by avoiding making decisions.
Of course, there will be mistakes made in the pursuit of excellence, but this cannot be an excuse. What I found is that in this quest to achieve greatness, the severity and number of mistakes are going to naturally be reduced. Our focus needs to be on achieving something. This leads to a bias for action.
Our Leadership Nudge to you this week is this:
Take a look at your annual evaluations. Take a look at your organizational objectives. Take a look at the posters around your organization. Look to see if these things are more about reducing errors or about achieving greatness. When you see the “error reduction” language, try to rephrase them in terms of “We are going to achieve something.”
Let us know what how it goes!
Enroll for the Leadership Nudge™ – www.davidmarquet.com
Check out this new course – https://hwt89810.isrefer.com/go/IBL/DMarquet/
