John Woods asks, "I don't know what the management of L.L. Bean is like,
but my superficial impression has been that it wants people to experiment
and that it understands that not all experiments will succeed like they
want them to. Is that right?"
**
To ALL:
Rick has made the point that we need to use a real corporate environment
responsibly in our discussion. We can learn from it, but I ask everyone
here to keep what they learn about Bean as a confidence. I also want to
make it clear that when I describe Bean, it is the private 'me' speaking,
and I am in no way representing the company. My views may or may not be
accurate portrayals of the company in the eyes of another person. I
personally tend to have strong feelings, and I will express them strongly.
My experience is that some of you may react strongly -- both positively
and negatively -- to my epxressions. Some of what I say will be an
unpopular viewpoint. Please let me reemphasize that they are my beliefs
and viewpoints, and not those of LL Bean. What I say about the Bean
culture in small snippets taken out of the larger context should in no way
be taken as an overall indictment of the company. It is emphatically a
great company, and a great place to work.
Now, to answer John.
John,
You are generally correct. We speak of failures in a positive sense. We
learn from failures, and we communicate what we learned. In that sense,
the failure is a success.
Perhaps it is the Puritan in me, but some of the 'wisdoms' about failure
in experiments do not ring true to me, and I am unaware of any corporate
culture where they are true. For instance, many people talk about
celebrating failure, but I know of no one who celebrates it. Furthermore,
while it is important to never shy away from the failure, it _is_
nevertheless discomfitting to fail. There is no doubt in my mind that
there is a personal and professional cost to failing. Because there is a
cost to failure -- even if it is only a little tiny bit of lost
credibility -- it helps to make experiments a bit more successful. It puts
more energy, more creative juices, more adrenalin, into the experiment.
The personal costs, the burdens, the responsibility, are very real
components to experimentation. No one walks away from a failed experiment
feeling wholly good about it. This is the other face of empowerment.
I have seen celebrations of failure in other contexts which I will not
name. Where celebration occurred, learning did not occur, and no one had a
sense of responsibility. My view is that those experiments had no value
at all as a consequence of how the failure was treated.
So, the somewhat natural order of things is that companies perhaps
unintentionally _do_ make it uncomortable for people to fail. These costs
add value in my opinion. They help people bring focus and energy, and
they facilitate paradigm shifts because they force people to think outside
the box about ways to create success.
The task is for the company and the employees to manage the intensity of
the discomfort in such a way that it adds value and minimizes the negative
impacts. The negatives that you describe, John, _do_ occur. I think if
the company is well-run and healthy, the negatives far outweigh the
positives. The existence of the negatives is a powerful reason why people
shy away from taking empowerment.
It is mildly paradoxical that when we do strategic self-assessments, which
is fairly often, we are pretty harsh on ourselves. By that I mean we can
list 4 pages of weaknesses for every page of strengths. The implication
is that we do not personalize or judge ourselves too severely for our
weaknesses, and therefore it is generally a powerful learning experience.
Most non-corporate cultures that I am aware of are totally unable to see
themselves with such frankness, and they suffer as a consequence.
What that means to me is that at Bean, while there are costs to failure or
weakness, the costs are not so high as to be unhealthy on the whole.
CAVEAT: Experimentation is different than true R&D. A different set of
rules apply there, and I do not know much about that. Product development
is somewhat akin to R&D, but has very high costs for failure. When IBM
launches the next evolution in PCs, the project leader's job may well rest
on the outcome. The jobs of many other employees and contractors will
also be involved. this is not to impugn IBM, I just use their name as a
well-known example.
-- Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc 76234.3636@compuserve.com