How you treat the bringer of (bad) news tells me a lot about the organisation and potential for business growth. Go Read Accelerate – that book is full of insights. One of the models, is the organisational types from Westrum:
Andy Kelk has a to-the-point description about Westrum on their blog:
To test your organisation, you can run a very simple survey asking the group to rate how well they identify with 6 statements:
https://www.andykelk.net/devops/using-the-westrum-typology-to-measure-culture
- On my team, information is actively sought.
- On my team, failures are learning opportunities, and messengers of them are not punished.
- On my team, responsibilities are shared.
- On my team, cross-functional collaboration is encouraged and rewarded.
- On my team, failure causes enquiry.
- On my team, new ideas are welcomed.
The respondents rate each statement from a 1 (strongly disagree) to a 7 (strongly agree). By collecting aggregating the results, you can see where your organisation may be falling short and put actions in place to address those areas. These questions come from peer-reviewed research by Nicole Forsgren.
https://www.andykelk.net/devops/using-the-westrum-typology-to-measure-culture
So when a passionate person comes to you with (bad) news, what do you and your organisation do? Do you reflect, ignore or hide the request? Do you say that it’s not a good idea to bridge the organisation? Do you raise an Non-conformity and set in motion events to bring “justice”? Do you experiment to implement the novel ideas and actively seek information?
FAIL = First Attempt In Learning.
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