We've all encountered teams who have impressed us with their knowledge; teams that blow us away with their outstanding grasp of what is needed to excel in their purpose and role. You just know that asking a question about the work of the team would elicit, from even the most junior team member, a confident and accurate answer. So impressive..... but if we returned to that team in six months, a year, five years, would they still demonstrate that level of competence? Or would personnel churn, organisational circumstances, or changes in strategic direction mean that they no longer wore the crown they once did? Worse still, did complacency set in as pride in their existing knowledge prevented them taking the risks that are inherent in learning new things?
It's this fascinating link between risk taking, learning and growth that I'll be exploring through this and the next three articles in this series. Throughout this exploration I'll be encouraging a reassessment of what we might think of as failure and offering a structured way of using experiential learning tools to work with teams to develop their attitude and approach to risk. The choice of subject has been stimulated by Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson's 2024 book Right Kind of Wrong which is a great read for anybody interested in how this triangle of dependencies - risk taking, learning and growth - works in organisations. Amy made extensive use of an activity called Electric Maze (now known as EM4) collect behavioural data for the book, and as Electric Maze (EM4) is now an RSVP Design product we feel like we might be able to contribute something to the conversation.
In the first article I'll be talking about failure. Starting with the different types of failure that Amy suggests, and how we can address each type via experiential approaches.
The second article will look at how we might create a team culture that balances risk-awareness with a keen focus on available learning. Again a series of structured learning activities and subsequent transfer of learning back to the workplace is central here.
Finally I look in a bit more detail at the sort of structural changes that might make the dependencies of risk taking, learning and growth easier to craft into a virtuous cycle. That's the long-term piece that does ensure that the impressive, high-performing team is still there far into the future for us all the admire.
