Fear
"Fear of making mistakes is the root of bureaucracy and the enemy of development"
- Ingvar Kamprad
(Founder of IKEA)
While fear comes in many different levels there is of course no doubt that paralyzing terror has a negative effect on creativity. This would of course not be expected at any enterprise today but even tiny amounts of fear can be found deep in the minds of your colleagues and it must be actively fought.
As complex social humans everybody has needs to be liked do meaningful things. If the company culture doesn't actively encourage people saying what they think and act according to the best of their knowledge there will be at all levels of decision-making and creativity.
Any business involves risk and reducing unnecessary risk is good practice. But risks must be taken to do novel things which ultimately drives future business. Reduce personal risk for co-workers and make sure there is a safety mechanism for when decisions have gone bad, after the fact very little is gained from further punishing a bad decision anyway.
Learning and future improvements must be possible even when mistakes occur, try blameless postmortems for a way to avoid future repetition of mistakes without inducing fear.
- Ingvar Kamprad
(Founder of IKEA)
While fear comes in many different levels there is of course no doubt that paralyzing terror has a negative effect on creativity. This would of course not be expected at any enterprise today but even tiny amounts of fear can be found deep in the minds of your colleagues and it must be actively fought.
As complex social humans everybody has needs to be liked do meaningful things. If the company culture doesn't actively encourage people saying what they think and act according to the best of their knowledge there will be at all levels of decision-making and creativity.
Any business involves risk and reducing unnecessary risk is good practice. But risks must be taken to do novel things which ultimately drives future business. Reduce personal risk for co-workers and make sure there is a safety mechanism for when decisions have gone bad, after the fact very little is gained from further punishing a bad decision anyway.
Learning and future improvements must be possible even when mistakes occur, try blameless postmortems for a way to avoid future repetition of mistakes without inducing fear.
Ingvar Kamprad
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