INNOVATION CYCLE STEP 4: IF IT WINS, CELEBRATE IT; IF IT FAILS, SUNSHINE IT

If Sheila’s initiative succeeds, make it clear you’re delighted. You might pat her on the back, offer her a glass of champagne, or take the entire team out to dinner. How you celebrate is up to you. The one thing you must do is show, ideally in public, that you are pleased she went ahead despite your doubts and offer a clear “You were right! I was wrong!” to show all employees it’s okay to buck the opinion of the boss.

We also encourage all managers to consider each of their employees regularly and make sure they’ve got the best person in every spot. To help managers on the judgment calls, we talk about the Keeper Test:

If a person on your team were to quit tomorrow, would you try to change their mind? Or would you accept their resignation, perhaps with a little relief? If the latter, you should give them a severance package now, and look for a star, someone you would fight to keep.

In a loosely coupled organization, where talent density is high and innovation is the primary goal, a traditional, control-oriented approach is not the most effective choice. Instead of seeking to minimize error through oversight or process, focus on setting clear context, building alignment of the North Star between boss and team, and giving the informed captain the freedom to decide.

Part 4: Clear Thinking in Action

Often what seems like poor judgement in hindsight doesn’t even register as a decision in the moment. When the defaults conspire, we react without thinking. And that reaction doesn’t even count as a decision. Once we register the opportunity to make a conscious choice, the question becomes: How can we make the best decision possible?

The decision itself should represent the outcome of the decision-making process. That process is about weighing your options with the aim of selecting the best one, and it’s composed of four stages: defining the problem, exploring possible solutions, evaluating the options, and finally making the judgment and executing the best option. We will discuss each of these components in detail throughout this chapter.

Many of us have a hard time learning from our decisions. One reason is that our thinking and decision-making process is often invisible to us. We inadvertently conceal from ourselves the steps we took to reach our final decision. Once that decision gets made, we don’t stop to reflect, but just move forward. And when we look back at our decision later, our ego manipulates our memories. We confuse what we know now with what we knew at the time we made the decision. And we see the outcomes and read them back into our intentions: “Oh, I meant to do that.”

If you don’t check your thinking at the time you made the decision— what you knew, what you thought was important, and how you reasoned about it— you’ll never know whether you made a good decision or just got lucky. If you want to learn from decisions, you need to make the invisible thought process as visible and open to scrutiny as possible. The following safeguard can help:

Safeguard: Keep a record of your thoughts at the time you make the decision.