In this text, Duunitori’s principal consultant Lauri Vaisto explores Amy Edmondson’s book about fearless organizations. Vaisto ponders whether embracing failure as a learning opportunity could transform psychological safety into a powerful tool for driving innovation within organizations.
Written in August 25, 2022
First, a word of warning: not everyone you know defines psychological safety in the same way as Amy Edmondson.
On the other hand, the title of a book does not always succeed in describing its contents as accurately as The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
The Fearless Organization assumes that the basic need of the workplace is continuous learning – whether the ultimate goal is better patient safety, more profitable business, or something else. A psychologically safe community is a better learning and innovative community.
Psychological safety is built primarily by dispelling fears that may be associated with, for example, failure, the experience of being embarrassed, losing one’s job, hierarchical structures, etc. Edmondson, Professor of Leadership and Management, takes the reader through research findings and case studies to a concise guide for anyone who wants to build a fear-free workplace.
Some who pick up the book may find Edmondson’s approach to psychological safety as a tool, not an end in itself, scandalous.
There is so much talk about psychological safety these days that there is bound to be a diversity of meanings given to the concept.
I suspect that some who pick up the book may find Edmondson’s approach to psychological safety as a tool, not an end in itself, radical or even scandalous. Edmondson is also quite explicit in saying that psychological safety is not about wrapping anyone up in a cotton ball.
A psychologically safe environment is also a place where you can ask employees to commit to ambitious goals.
And believe it or not, firing can also be a way of building psychological safety (Spoiler alert: when an employee seriously breaks the rules or acts in flagrant violation of shared values).
What does this have to do with leadership?
While everyone is involved in building psychological safety, Edmondson does not hide the primacy of the role of leaders.
The role of the leader is to help build a shared, informed understanding of goals and expectations. The leader must encourage and stimulate participation in the organisational development debate by showing interest and creating structures in which participation is possible and natural.
The Fearless Organization is very much about failure and learning from failure. In order to learn from them, they must first be brought to light.
Secondly, you have to be able to talk about failure in a way that keeps the focus on the mistakes themselves, not on the person who made them.
Neither is an easy task, and both require sustained, consistent effort. As a leader, it’s easy to say, ”we celebrate failure here”. But it takes real discipline to ensure that it actually happens time and time again.
What about the workplace culture?
Leading with fear is not the only aspect of fear in the workplace. Amy Edmondson describes our constant risk assessment of what can or cannot be said in the company of others.
We stay silent because we are afraid of offending others, using the wrong language or breaking norms. Silence does not always have direct negative consequences, but when it becomes a habit it can lead to big problems.
On the other hand, even a single act of silence can lead to the loss of hundreds of lives, as happened in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 in the Canary Islands in 1977.
None of us can force our colleagues to lower their guard and become vulnerable in the name of psychological safety. But Edmondson offers some advice that we can use to create an atmosphere where safety has room to grow by our own example.
We ourselves can take the initiative in admitting mistakes or that we need someone else’s help. It can also be a good idea to ask a colleague about their work-related thoughts and concerns – and whether there is anything you can do to help them.
What about the employer brand?
”Don’t explain it. Show it!” is a familiar piece of advice I give to clients.
In employer communications, all you can do with buzzwords is make people feel bad unless you can back them up with facts. (Similarly, employers could be bolder when there’s actually something to say.)
But how do you prove something that doesn’t exist? How can you tell about the ”absence of fear”?
The Fearless Organization offers an idea with a Finnish flavor. Edmondson uses Nokia (the cell phone company) as an example of how a climate of fear can prevent a company from seeing destruction at the end of its chosen path.
Similarly, Nokia (the network company), is presented as an organisation that has learned from past mistakes and has gone to great lengths to build psychological safety. I have personally worked at neither, but where the former seems an almost repulsive place to work, the latter seems something I would at least be prepared to give a chance.
Buzz Trap: The VUCA World
The Fearless Organization is moderate in tone and contains very little real buzz juice. Still, Edmondson has a favorite acronym: VUCA We live (today) in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Such a world requires certain skills and capacities (which can be supported, for example, by psychological safety).
I am not saying that Edmondson is not right.
However, I would point out that VUCA as a term is getting well over 30 years old. The speed of change and the global impact of individual events have undoubtedly increased over the last few decades, but when exactly did we live in a predictable and simple world?
Probably in each of our own childhoods.
Worth the Buzz: Humility
The Fearless Organization reminds us that in a complex world, recognizing and acknowledging our own limits should be a matter of simple realism. Yet at least some leaders are blessed with a great deal of self-confidence, and communities tend to turn to their leaders for the Great Wisdom.
But fostering an all-knowing approach to leadership is not about building a workplace where younger and less experienced people dare to speak up. Amy Edmondson encourages leaders to say as often as possible, ”I don’t know.”
After all, someone else might actually know – as long as they get a chance to speak up.
About the project
Worth the Buzz? is a project by Nordic Business Forum’s resident reader Lauri Vaisto. Lauri gets to know the NBForum speakers by reading their books – and sharing the insights with the public. In 2022, Lauri focused specifically on three themes:: management and leadership, workplace culture and employer brand.
The works in the 2022 project include:
- Yuval Noah Harari: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
- Rutger Bregman: Humankind: A hopeful History
- Jitske Kramer: The Corporate Tribe: Organizational Lessons From Anthropology
- Petter A. Stordalen: Thank God, it’s Monday!
- Amy Edmondson: The Fearless Organization
- Erin Meyer: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
- Zoe Chance: Influence is Your Superpower
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