Falling to Perfection

Robert I. Sutton makes a very compelling point in offering that one of the most telling elements to the culture of a company or organization is the answer to the question, "What happens to people when they fail?"

This was brought up in the course "Converting Strategy into Action" taught by Johann Lindig. Sutton maintains that fear can paralyze people into inaction, or simply focusing on how not to expose what may appear to be failures rather than moving towards an actual goal.

Just about nothing in dance is possible with trying and failing, usually multiple times. One of my favorite stories is told by former New York City Ballet principal dancer Melinda Roy. She recounted that during her days as a corps dancer (read: ensemble dancer, those who work tirelessly and are not front and center in the show) she had her first chance to take to the floor.

"It was my chance; my moment to shine," she smiled, but each time Mr. B (George Balanchine, arguably one of the greatest choreographers of our time) sent her back, saying she wasn't giving enough. After the umpteenth try, she was starting to get annoyed. "... So the next time, I came plowing across the floor and I slipped and fell, right at his feet. I looked up at him and said, 'Is that it?' and he said, 'Yes, dear, that was it!'" I love the grin on Ms. Roy's face when she finishes her tale.

A rule in dance is to make sure that whatever you do, make sure you end it well. It doesn't matter how many turns you pulled off if you botched the ending. The ending is what the audience remembers. Cruel, but true. I believe this applies to anything, including the office. If you reach your goal, despite a few wonky developments that you then took care of, I'd hope it would still be considered a success.

So where am I going with this? In dance you're almost expected to fail before you get something. In the corporate world, it doesn't seem to be that way. Even though we may not have ever done something before, we're expected to get it right pretty close to toute suite. "Fail early and fail often" can be touted but how often is it a reality? To be sure, dancers need to "get it" after a reasonable amount of time, but it's ok to fail at first. Unless we are in an environment in which we know we can try things, we will never be able to fly off the ground, whether in the dance studio or in the office.

Do Do Do

Today was my second day of the "Converting Strategy to Action" class, part of the Stanford Advanced Project Management series. The concept of the "Knowing-Doing Gap" by Stanford Professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton was introduced by our engaging instructor Johann Lindig. In a nutshell, it says that despite a ton of classroom time, consulting, and research, people in business don't enact much change. You can't just sit in a classroom discussing things and then expect to be able to DO things that move a business.

Whoever built the slide introducing the concept is to be commended, since it showed an image of a ballet dancer. Dance was never brought up in the class, but yes, I thought, dance is a perfect example! You can't read books about ballet and expect to be able to just get up and show the world 32 fouettes, much less a beautifully turned out and pointed foot.

I realize I take for granted that everything in dance and in music I have to attempt to do before I can do anything. Without doing there is ... well, nothing. You can just stand there and think about how you are supposed to engage your muscles and align your hips and on and on and ... there you are, still in the same place. It's happened to me lots of times when I think about a movement excessively; I'm literally paralyzed. I can't move. I have to get over myself and just try it. It'll take many wonky tries before I even start getting it, but that's part of the process.

For the office, though, I've never thought about it quite the same way. Sure, there's no way you can know everything before you try something, but there's so much planning, analysis and re-analysis, and consensus building going on that individuals and teams are often similarly paralyzed into inaction. Talking is no substitute for action but it can be like a sedative; it makes us feel as if we've done something. Think about it this way: A dance isn't going to create itself from a lot of discussion. At the office, often it's simply a time constraint that forces us to action.

But what if we can see it as trying out a new step, or a new, difficult passage to play on a musical instrument? There's nothing until you do something. It may not be right the first time, so for this approach it's important to be in an organization that supports doing and doing again, with learnings from the first time. Google often encourages teams to "launch and iterate" and yet in some organizations we try so hard to avoid any "failures" at the first attempt due to significant resources on the line. What's the balance here?

I don't have an answer that satisfies me yet, but I do know that going back to the dance and music parallel helps ground me. I'll remind myself: Without doing, there is nothing.

Perhaps that is enough for now.