“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” ~ Leonard Cohen
Greetings -
I hope you, your families and friends are well! We welcomed our daughter home this weekend for her Spring Break. We are very much looking forward to spending time with her and adventuring around Sonoma County.
Last week, I was inducted into our local Rotary chapter. I have been looking for a more structured and organized way to continue my community service work, and this is a natural outlet and a great group for that. We are gearing up for our annual St. Patrick's Day fundraiser and parade, starting bright and early at 6:00am on Sunday March 17. I guess I will be napping by noon! [For those not familiar with Rotary, it is an "organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. In more than 166 countries worldwide, approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 35,000 Rotary clubs." A big thank you to my wife, Rosemary, who kindly served as my sponsor, and who is in her second year of membership.]
This edition primarily looks at the concept of failure - what it is, how it manifests and what and how we can learn from it. Multiple perspectives are provided and I especially want to make a plug for the 4-part Freakonomics podcast series. It is very well done and quite informative, with an array of examples, case studies and analyses. Companion pieces speak to accountability, high-reliability and resilience and their intersection with failure.
I have also included two thoughtful posts on productivity and efficiency. The authors call (plea?) for a reduction in speed for speed's sake and what more deliberate approaches to productivity might look like in fostering sustainable work environments.
As always, happy reading and listening!
Be well, take good care of your families and community.
-kj
PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)
Featured
We navigate a diametrically opposed "failure culture": on the one hand, we are implored to avoid failure at all cost; while on the other hand, failure is extolled as a virtue, with mantras like fail rapidly and frequently (and often with a healthy dose of braggadocio). Neither polarity provides context or a framework for assessing the meaning of failure, how failure can manifest, what constitutes "good" vs "bad" failing (from which we might learn a great deal) and how the best organizations both foster and learn from failure.
In her most recent book, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, Amy Edmondson not only unpacks the "failure landscape,"- basic vs complex vs intelligent failures - she provides a framework to "... discuss and practice failure wisely...[with an emphasis on how to]...minimize unproductive failure, pursue intelligent failure" and ultimately analyze and learn as much as we can about what and how failure occurred.
Weaving a rich tapestry of analysis, insights and a range of examples and case studies across multiple industries, "...Edmondson gives us specifically tailored practices, skills, and mindsets to help us replace shame and blame with curiosity, vulnerability and personal growth." (For those not up for the book (which is quite good), you can listen to an interview she did on the Armchair Expert (Dax Shepard) podcast late last year.)
Articles
Harvard Business Review: How to Actually Encourage Employee Accountability. "To treat mistakes restoratively, leaders need humility, grace, and patience. They must see any person’s arc of professional success as more than the sum total of any single assignment. Leaders also need the humility to acknowledge their contribution to people’s failures...We have a long way to go before accountability within organizations becomes a welcomed process that yields fair, actionable feedback and encourages employees to embrace the opportunity to improve their performance and expand their contributions. Making dignity, fairness, and restoration foundational components of accountability systems is a powerful place to start."
Harvard Business Review: Building Organizational Resilience. "To cope—and thrive—in uncertain times, develop scripted routines, simple rules, and the ability to improvise."
McKinsey & Company: What High-Reliability Organizations Get Right. "Technology isn’t the only—or even the most important—reason high-reliability organizations outperform their peers."
Psyche: Why Efficiency is Dangerous and Slowing Down Makes Life Better. "The urge to do everything faster and better is risky. Far wiser to do what’s good enough for the range of possible futures."
Harvard Business Review: Leadership in a Politically Charged Age. "What social psychology and relationship science can teach us about conflict in the workplace—and how to manage it."
Blog Posts & Opinions
The Atlantic: The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism. "Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology. It’s past time we call it what it is."
Literary Hub: The Cult of the Hustle: Why We All Want to Become Our Own Boss. "Modern culture whispers in your ears. If you listen closely, you can hear it everywhere...Be an entrepreneur. Start your own business. Work for yourself. What these whispers are telling you is that you’re on your own. When it comes to getting ahead in the world today, you can’t simply go work for someone else. Real success comes to people who break the mold, seize their own destiny, and do it themselves. If you want a shot at material success, they say, you must be your own boss."
Paul Graham: The Acceleration of Addictiveness. "The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40." [KJ note: a prescient piece, as relevant today (if not more) than when he originally wrote it in 2010.]
Cal Newport (The New Yorker): It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity. "We need fewer things to work on. Starting now."
Podcasts
Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything. How to Succeed at Failing: Parts 1-4.
Part 1: The Chain of Events. "We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad decisions. Can this pattern be reversed? We try — with stories about wildfires, school shootings, and love."
Part 2: Life and Death. "In medicine, failure can be catastrophic. It can also produce discoveries that save millions of lives. Tales from the front line, the lab, and the I.T. department."
Part 3: Grit vs Quit. "Giving up can be painful. That’s why we need to talk about it. Today: stories about glitchy apps, leaky paint cans, broken sculptures — and a quest for the perfect bowl of ramen. Part of the series."
Part 4: Extreme Resiliency. "Everyone makes mistakes. How do you learn from them? Lessons from the classroom, the Air Force, and the world’s deadliest infectious disease."
Arts, Music, Culture & Humor Corner
Vanity Fair: How a Notorious Alleged Smuggler Is Trying to Pry Back the Mafia’s Multimillion-Dollar Caravaggio. "Authorities have accused William Veres of illicit art dealing across Europe. With his own freedom in the balance, he’s now aiding in the search for one of the world’s most important missing paintings—thought to have been lifted by the mob more than five decades ago."
The New Yorker: What Does California Sound Like? "A dazzling array of new music at the California Festival, spearheaded by Esa-Pekka Salonen."
The Guardian: The Nature Cure: How Time Outdoors Transforms Our Memory, Imagination and Logic. "Without engaging with natural environments, our brains cease to work well. As the new field of environmental neuroscience proves, exposure to nature isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity."
McSweeney's: In the Office Auto-Reply Emails for a Hybrid Work Schedule. "Greetings! I’m in the office again today and won’t be able to respond to your message. I am getting right with my god because the free mayonnaise-and-deli-meat sandwich my employer offered as an RTO incentive has been sitting on the counter at room temperature for two and a half hours."
Reflections
“I am not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” ~ Louisa May Alcott
"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." ~ André Gide
"Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough." ~ Gail Sheehy
“Regard yourself as a cloud, in the flesh, because you see, clouds never make mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that was misshapen? Did you ever see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing. But, if you will, treat yourself for a while as a cloud or a wave and realize that you can’t make a mistake whatever you do. Because even if you do something that appears totally disastrous, it will all come out in the wash somehow or another. Then through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence. And through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition.” ~ Alan Watts