44 Error-friendly learning 

Error-friendly learning

Even within a space of psychological safety some teams are so focused on ‘what went wrong’ that we call it a focus on ‘criticisms and total discrediting’ (Weick, 1979). At some point, the focus on the ‘wrongs’, the ‘school of hard knocks’, takes its toll.

Let’s explore that in more detail. Up to a point, criticisms and ‘calling things out’, increase team performance and the quality of outcomes. At some point however the criticisms start to be distracting and they take away from the focus on performance.

Discrediting is the process of questioning what we know and what currently works. Too little, and we start of believe ‘our own stories’. Sadly, statistics suggests that as teams and team members become too confident, they don’t do enough discrediting and they move into the complacency phase. In some organisations this can endanger team members.

Too much discrediting and teams and team members throw out all that they know, and they again lose capability and can endanger themselves. Lessons from the right level of discrediting are that as things change, we need to question whether what we knew and what worked before, will continue to work.

There is an interaction effect and some irony. Too much criticism and too little discrediting leads to poor performance, lower quality of outcomes, wasted energy, AND a lack of focus on what is important and also an overconfidence in routines.

A healthy approach to criticism and discrediting is what we call an error-friendly learning culture. These are built on healthy AARs (After Action Reviews) and situations where teams seek feedback, share information, ask for help, talk about errors, and they experiment. They are open and they know that errors happen, and they are learning moments.

A word of caution. There is a difference between errors that might be classified as ‘small things’, and those that are immediately catastrophic.

Activity

Create a ‘small wins’ Daily Progress Checklist (DPC) for your change opportunity.

Start recording what is going well.

Using the same approach create an ‘error-friendly learning’ checklist for your change opportunity. These are things that you need to modify and find ways to change, enhance or stop doing.

Keep this activity going throughout the rest of this unit.

Once ‘error-friendly learning’ outcomes are checked off, they also then become a ‘small win’!

What are you learning? Be sure to keep notice of the ‘error-friendly learning’ opportunities along the way.

Sometimes it is good for you and your team to just ‘stop’ and ‘take the temperature’ overall, outside of a specific event or project. Using the small wins DCL and the ‘error-friendly’ list is a nice way to keep track!