A recent post on GapingVoid talks about another performance equation (I shared one yesterday on my blog here):
Performance improvements = Reducing Errors + Increasing Insights
– Gary Klein
The author of the post argues that while there is a lot of focus on reducing errors in organisations, there is not enough focus or energy spent on increasing the number of insights that people could share and use to drive productivity improvements.
I think there are many reasons for this behaviour. Firstly, we are biologically attuned to negative information more than anything else. So, it is obvious that we are attuned to finding what is wrong and working on correcting the same.
However, it takes intentional effort to gain insights. The post also shares three ways to gain insights – Creative desperation, making new connections and finding obvious contradictions.
I have written about this earlier as well here, here and here. The key insight here is that as leaders, we need to be more intentional about not only looking for but also being open for insights.
If we truly want our teams to share their insights with us, we need to not only create a culture of openness but also celebrate such sharing of insights, whether or not they were useful.
In conclusion, unless we are looking at both the parts of the performance equation intentionally, we are leaving potential gains in productivity on the table. The unintended consequence of being open for insights could lead to exaptive or breakthrough innovation opportunity.
