Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Behavior v Outcome



You have to give Jurgen Appelo high marks for imaginative illustrations that catch the eye and convey the thought. He says this is one of his best illustrations ever; he may be right. He calls it his "celebration grid". I imagine Jurgen will be telling us a lot more about this if it catches on.





But what he says about these grid points is the more important take away:

  • “Celebrate failure” is nonsense, because you shouldn’t celebrate failure that comes from mistakes (the red part). What you should celebrate is learning, and repeating good practices (the green parts).
  • Pay-for-performance tends to drive people away from experiments, toward the safe practices on the right, with little learning as a result. 
  • Hierarchies are good at exploiting opportunities, and endlessly repeating the same practices; but they learn very little. 
  • Networks are good at exploring new opportunities, and failing half of the time, but they’re not good at efficiently repeating practices.
File this under leadership for learning and motivation, change management, managing team dynamics, and carrot and stick.


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