Tag Archives: fear

Taking Risks Based on Evidence

My opinion has long been that football teams are too scared to take an action that is smart but opens the coach to criticism. So instead of attempting to make it on 4th down (if you don’t understand American football, just skip this post) they punt because that is the decision that is accepted as reasonable.

So instead of doing what is wise they do what avoids criticism. Fear drives them to take the less advantageous action. Now I have never looked hard at the numbers, but my impression is that it is well worth the risk to go for it on 4th down often. In a quick search I don’t see a paper by a Harvard professor (this article refers to it also – Fourth down: To punt or to go?) on going for it on 4th down but I found on by a University of California, Berkeley economist (David Romer wrote called “Do Firms Maximize? Evidence from Professional Football.”).

On the 1,604 fourth downs in the sample for which the analysis implies that teams are on average better off kicking, they went for it only nine times. But on the 1,068 fourth downs for which the analysis implies that teams are on average better off going for it, they kicked 959 times.

My guess is that the advantages to going for it on 4th down are greater for high school than college which is greater than the advantage for the pros (but I may be wrong). My guess is this difference is greater the more yardage is needed. Basically my feeling is the variation in high school is very high in high school and decreases with greater skill, experience and preparation. Also the kicking ability (punting and field goals) impacts the choices of going for it on 4th down and that dramatically increases in college. So if I am correct, I think pro coaches should be more aggressive on 4th down, but likely less aggressive than high school coaches should be.

But in any event the data should be explored and strategies should be tested.

Continue reading →

Learn by Seeking Knowledge – Not Just from Mistakes

Being open to new ideas and new knowledge is what is needed to learn. Experimenting, seeking out new knowledge is even better.

You can be successful and see an even better way to do things and learn from it. This seems the best way to learn to me – not to just learn from mistakes. Of course this means your goal has to be improvement not just avoiding more mistakes than before.

Your actions are based on theories (often unconsciously): and learning involves improving those theories. Learning requires updating faulty ideas (or learning new ideas – in which case ignorance rather than a faulty theory may have lead to the mistake). Encouraging people to learn from mistakes is useful when it is about freeing them to make errors and learn from them. But you should be learning all the time – not just when you make mistakes.

You can be also be wrong and not learn (lots of people seem to do this). This is by far the biggest state I see. It isn’t an absence of people making mistakes (including carrying out processes based on faulty theories) that is slowing learning. People are very reluctant to make errors of commission (and errors of commission due to a change is avoided even more). This reluctance obviously makes learning (and improvement) more difficult. And the reluctance is often enhanced by fear created by the management system.

It is best to be open and seek out new knowledge and learn that way as much as possible. Now, you should also not be scared to be wrong. Taking the right risks is important to improving – encouraging creativity and innovation and risk taking is wise.

Experiment and be open to learn from what could be better and improve (PDSA is a great way to try things and evaluate how they work). And the idea is not to be so conservative that every turn of the PDSA cycle has no failures. In order to get significant successes it is likely you will try things that don’t always work.

The desire to improve understanding (and the desire to improve results provides focus to the learning) is what is valuable in learning – not being wrong. Creating a culture where being wrong needs to be avoided harms learning because people avoid risk and seek to distance themselves from failure instead of experimenting and digging into the details when something goes wrong. Instead of learning from mistakes people try to stay as far away from them and hide them from others. That is not helpful. But what is needed is more desire to continually learn – learning from mistakes is wise but hardly the only way to learn.

Lean Leaders

Lean leaders [the broken link was removed] by April Terreri:

Tim Corcoran, vice president of ZF Sales & Services, NA, LLC, that re-manufactures automotive transmissions and steering systems in Vernon Hills, IL. “We had a number of false starts by implementing tools like kaizen, value stream mapping and the 5Ss,” he admits. “We found it’s really about the thinking and how we approach work.” Once he and his first-line managers participated in a lean workshop at Lean Learning Center, everything began to click. “We learned to identify problems, analyze them and develop processes to solve them the same way every time.”

The tools are very helpful but the change in mindset is critical. Without the change in the way business is viewed the tools may be able to help but often can prove of limited value. Once an organization starts truly adopting principles like surfacing problems so the system can be fixed instead of hiding problems so the individual doesn’t get blamed then the tools are critical to provide results that will encourage those who are skeptical to at least try this new way of looking at things.

Smith discovered some workers were hiding scrap. “They were afraid; but I told them the only thing I care about is how to prevent it from happening again,” he says. Scrap has since dropped dramatically–about 50 percent over the last few years.

Exactly!

Managing Fear

The post, Root Causes of Crunch Mode from the Game Manager blog makes the good point that

Fear and anxiety are known to reduce comprehension and learning ability. W. Edwards Deming made “drive out fear” one of his 14 management changes America needed to make in order to compete with Japan. Fear is a valuable physiological reaction in some situations, but fear make(s) it difficult to think, and thinking is generally superior to fighting in most corporate settings.

A good article on this topic is, Managing Fear by Gerald Suarez (who I worked with for several years). There are also 3 videos on this topic by Dr. Suarez, available from Management Wisdom, the producers of the Deming Library videos. I must admit I didn’t really understand the effects of fear and anxiety on performance until hearing Dr. Suarez speak on the topic many years ago.

From the Managing Fear article:

Fear erodes joy in work, limits communication, and stifles innovation. Fear fosters short-term thinking as people search to avoid reprisal, perhaps at the expense of others in the system.

Fear also produces questionable data, as people tend to focus on eliminating the threat instead of working to achieve the desired positive outcomes.

See previous post: Targets Distorting the System

John Hunter