According to MarketWatch, Disney’s The Lone Ranger brought in just $48.9 million in its first five days in theaters.  Industry experts estimate that the movie cost between $215 million and $250 million to create.  With such high production costs, analysts have a bleak outlook that Disney will be able to recoup their costs even with overseas royalties.  How in the era of powerful market testing can there be such a big gap between expectations and reality.  How can there still be such big box office failures?  Many of the biggest bombs are able to recoup revenue through global distribution (see the list of the Biggest Movie Failures).

The Lone Ranger had high powered A-list talent with Johnny Depp and producer by Jerry Bruckheimer.  Both Depp and Bruckheimer had worked together on the successful cinema series Pirates of the Caribbean.  Bruckheimer wanted the movie to revive a dead Western genre by introducing a new take on the classic radio and television series.  This was the same strategy that he had used in creating the hits Top Gun and Pirates of the Caribbean.  The movie had marquee talent, amazing special effects, and a proven recipe for success.  What it lacked was a clear target market and a strong story.  Critics suggested that the movie was too long (at 2 hours and 29 minutes) and the script was too bland.  Movie making is a very complicated business.  Until all of the pieces are brought together in the end you never know what you’ll end up with.

This complexity means that even the most surefire success will sometimes miss the mark.  Bruckheimer was once quoted as saying that “Every time I make a movie I think that it’s going to be my last one, I think that no one is going to show up. I always have this sense that they’re all going to fail.  I am scared to death.”  It seems that Mr. Bruckheimer has another chance to face his fear.  I am curious to find out how much time the studios spend understanding and learning from their failures.  Do they estimate their risk of failure when they stray from the known movie formulas?

In his book The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg (@cduhigg) explains new research on how our brains crave the familiar with examples in music and movies.  This yearning for the familiar is one reason why we see so many sequels.  The audience is already familiar with the genre and the characters.  If the previous film or films were entertaining then the audience is willing to risk paying for another helping of the same dish.  While Bruckheimer certainly loves to take advantage of the momentum of sequels (Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure, Bad Boys, etc.) he also loves to take risks by trying to revive these dead genres.

Interestingly enough, Bruckheimer was also once quoted as saying “I think my success stems from one fear … fear of failure.”  While it is definitely too early to categorize the film as a failure, the opening box office performance will remind him of the pain sometimes involved in going off of the beaten path.  Another Hollywood icon captured this idea perfectly:

“If you’re not failing every now and again,
it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” – Woody Allen

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So today is the 1^st anniversary of launching my blog on leadership, innovation, and failure.  I cannot even start to explain how much I have learned along the way.  My goal was to mix my ideas and my research trying to post at least one article per week.  Over the last year I have written 68 posts which have been read by over 5000 unique visitors to the blog.  I would like to offer a huge “thank you” to everyone who took the time to comment, provide feedback, or help share my articles with your networks!

Over the last year I have had twelve articles and interviews published.  I have done webinars, speaking engagements, and built out a small consulting practice.  Just a few weeks ago I finalized my book proposal which I am currently pitching to literary agents.  When I began this journey 15 months ago I had no idea how much I was getting myself into.  I was passionate about how organizations were not learning from their failures and I wanted to take the time shed a light on the shortsightedness of this strategy.

In a world that is bent toward innovate, innovate, innovate but where we dare not fail, I wanted to highlight the absurdity of the underlying paradox, expose why I believe it is fundamentally flawed thinking, and explain what steps each of us can take to do something about it.  I feel like I have made some good progress toward that goal.

Recently I came across an HBR post from author John Butman (@JohnButman) on the concept of an “Idea Entrepreneur.”  Similar to what John describes I wanted to “make a difference, to change the world in some way” with my idea.  The concept of an idea entrepreneur seems to hit the nail on the head for me.  Like every entrepreneur I was willing to do anything and everything to advance my work.  To be really honest this work has been exhausting!  There are always a “few more” things that you can do to make something better, to reach a few more people, to get out one more article.  This “few more” mentality has made it incredibly difficult to maintain a balance between my work and my personal life – family and friends.

Today though I am not going to worry about what else could be done.  I am simply going to enjoy what has been done.

Thank you again for all of your support along the way!

-Matt

P.S. Below is a map of all of the readers who have visited my blog over the last year.  A small goal for me is to try to get at least one person from ever country to have visited.  If you know someone from one of the gray countries please feel free to pass my URL along (www.matthunt.co).

Top 10 Blog Posts:

1. A Lesson In Leadership: How Circuit City Forgot the Value of Their Employees
2. After a “Failed Launch” in 2005 – P90X Fitness Program Earns Revenue of $700m
3. Silicon Valley has moved from tolerating failure to embracing it. When will the rest of us?
4. Target Misses the Mark – a Failed Holiday Partnership With Neiman Marcus.
5. Risk vs. Reward – How Compensation, Career Path, and Employment Stability Drive Innovation
6. Why John Sculley Was Critical to Apple’s Success – We All Have a Role to Play
7. Veterans Day Lessons: Leadership, Learning, and Failure From a Soldier’s Perspective
8. How One CEO Created a “Failure Wall” to Build a Tolerance for Failure Within His Organization
9. The Failure of Ron Johnson and JCPenney: Changing a Company vs Building a Company
10. Why Youth Can Be an Advantage in Being an Entrepreneur: My Interview with Bailye and Brynne Stansberry

Big Data has been all the rage for the last couple of years as companies try to figure out how to mine all of the bits and bytes that are captured and stored from their business processes.

While there are many rewards that can come from this work there are an equal number of challenges in getting an ROI on your Big Data investment.  Organizations need to:

• Ensure they are capturing the “right” details,
• Confirm that their conclusions are accurate, and
• Create the ability to incorporate their findings back into business processes.

To be certain there are incredible insights that can be gleaned from all of this data.  Mining sales information across our retail and online channels for insights was part of my job for a couple of years while working at Best Buy.  During this time I recognized there were other ways to leverage our data that could be more cost effective.  We could glean insights just by paying more attention to our failed projects – we could learn from our Dark Data.

Dark Data Can Lead To Big Insights

I had first heard about the concept of Dark Data from a Wired magazine article in 2007.  The author, Thomas Goetz (@tgoetz), explained how organizations that routinely discarded data from their failed experiments or projects might be able to learn more from these failures if they stored them for future analysis.

Goetz described how a 1981 New England Journal of Medicine study had mistakenly linked drinking coffee with pancreatic cancer.  It ended up taking twenty years for the medical community to refute this claim because scientists needed to completely recreate a study in order to disprove the hypothesis.  The kicker is that there were likely many previous studies that had already proven that there was no link between coffee and pancreatic cancer but because that was not the conclusion they were looking for the results were thrown away.  Most studies at the time were looking for links with smoking and cancer or alcohol and cancer.  In science only positive correlations see the light of day and everything else gets discarded.  Similarly in business, only successful projects get talked about.

Thrown Out With the Trash

A company may have spent thousands or even millions of dollars on their latest innovation initiative.  If that initiative fails few people within the organization will know the details of why.  During my tenure at Best Buy I had launched an initiative to try and address this issue.  We too had launched many innovation projects with only a handful of successes.  To share the lessons learned from our errors I had launch a series called the Failure Forums.  Project leaders would prepare and present three things:

1. What had the group accomplished – a chance to share their wins,
2. What had the group learned – capturing the key takeaways, and
3. What would they have done differently?

Each Failure Forum would end with a Q&A session where others could ask questions that pertained to their projects.  We wanted to shine a light on our failures so that we could learn from them, not just throw them out with the trash.

Start With a Little Support and a Lot of Courage

Tapping into Dark Data doesn’t need to just come from archiving failed scientific experiments.  It can come from capturing failure in many parts of the organization.  While it would be ideal if every CEO embraced the concept of learning from our failures, we know that it is not reality.  Most leaders don’t reach the c-suite based on their long list of failures.  They might get there in spite of their failures but not because of them.  But tools like hosting Failure Forums can be utilized by groups as small as a team and still be effective.  All you need is a supportive leader and the courage to be vulnerable.

Other interesting articles on the value of Dark Data:

• University of Texas – Dark Data Needs an Advocate
• Gartner – Hidden Value in Hidden Data
• Information Age – Analysts urge IT leaders to deal with “dark data”

Food For Thought:

• Are you archiving data from your failed projects?
• Is your organization purposely trying to learn from failed projects?
• What is preventing you from taking the first step in prompting your team to learn from failures?

Last year I had the chance to do an interview with a former classmate and friend Lt. Col. Mark Weber on his thoughts regarding “Leadership, Learning, and Failure.”  Three years ago Mark had gotten a request to rejoin General David Petraeus as he was appointed to take command of the war in Afghanistan.  From a routine blood draw and examination it was discovered that what Mark thought had been an ulcer was in fact cancer.  For the last few years, Mark has taken great care to share his journey in his fight against cancer illuminating his circumstances to help others in their fight.  Frequently he didn’t have “answers” from the medical community so he decided to lead the assault himself, figuring it out along the way.  In the summer of 2012 Mark decided to take control of writing his own narrative too, wanting to share not just his cancer journey but his life story in a book Tell My Sons.  Like every father, he wanted to hand down his thoughts, ideas, and lessons learned for his sons.

This is my thank you to Mark for the lessons he has taught me through his journey and in our time together – the importance of character, the meaning of courage, the prioritization of family, and the truth of mortality.  Just last night Mark had updated his friends and family on the latest changes to his health.  He shared with everyone that his time left is brief.

I have known Mark for twenty-seven years.  We had gone to the same small high school in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  Back then Cretin High School was still an all-boys Catholic school with less than 200 students per class.  During our time there Mark and I were both in the JROTC military program.  And like so many at that age we were trying to figure out our place in the world.  We were friendly but at the time we weren’t close friends.  We both appreciated the lessons that the JROTC program offered and understood the future benefits that it could provide.  But neither of us was willing to do what it would take to climb to the higher ranks.  We were both a little nonconformist in our own ways.

Twenty-five years later Mark and I would connect again.  This time we were classmates in the Policy Fellows program at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Policy.  The program was a yearlong curriculum that focused on public policy advancement and leadership development.  In the first few meetings Mark and I would chat frequently; sharing our thoughts on the latest political topics.  It was nice to have a familiar face in a room full of strangers.  Even though Mark and I had been on widely divergent paths since high school we found that we had a lot in common.

Mark had gone on to a career in the military while I pursued one in the private sector.  While our life experiences had given us very different perspectives we found that we were both centrists.  We were pragmatists who wanted the government to work for the people it served.  In an era of hyper-partisanship and continuous hyperbole from political pundits we both wanted politics to move beyond a zero-sum game of brinksmanship.  I think this common ground approach is why I so enjoyed talking with Mark throughout the year.  Mark was consistent in this thinking whether he was candidly discussing the difficulties of military communications at the Pentagon or presenting his policy team’s ideas on homeowner land legacy, community development, and conservation.

Mark is an honest guy who even before his diagnosis would give you his thoughts very matter of fact.  He believes that there was no shame in a political compromise if it would move an issue forward and was based on good intent.  He is a realist who understood the lessons of French Philosopher Voltaire in knowing that “perfect is the enemy of the good.”  He wants to leave this world in a better place than he had found it and he has invested his time in serving that end.  We need more men and women in this world like Mark!

Thank you Mark and be well my friend.

Here is a link to the video of Mark and his son Matthew singing the song “Tell My Sons” – http://youtu.be/b3O6LbZlLb0

Last night the Miami Heat absolutely destroyed a San Antonio Spurs team that looked like they shouldn’t have even been on the court.  Maybe that’s because according to all of the preseason stats and punditry it should have been the Los Angeles Lakers?  But when the Lakers lost to the Spurs in the first round of the playoffs their season ended.  In sports, as in business, the best laid plans don’t always work out as expected.

Earlier in the season all of the pundits were overjoyed with the Lakers.  They had Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol and improved their chances to win yet another NBA title with key acquisitions.  A savvy trade the team had acquired two-time Most Valuable Player Steve Nash and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard.  They also went shopping for free agents Antawn Jamison and Jodie Meeks to add a little more depth to their bench.  On paper they looked like a powerhouse of a team!

Yahoo Sports contributor Mark Hawkins, among many others, had predicted that the Lakers would go with 64 wins and just 18 losses in the regular season (link here).  Instead the Lakers struggled to win just 45 games while losing 37 with plenty of injuries and some poor team chemistry.  While far from what they were capable of the 45 wins were enough to get the team into the playoffs.  There wasn’t much time to celebrate making to the playoffs though since they then proceeded to lose four games straight to the San Antonio Spurs.  For the record the Spurs had perfectly matched one of their regular season predictions by winning 58 games and losing 24 (note: also Mark Hawkins).

Food for thought:

• So what happened to the Lakers’ dream of a magic season and another NBA Championship?
• What lessons can they take away from their season?
• How can the rest of us learn from their failure?

Here is my article “Business and Basketball: Why the Lakers’ Year of Failure Matters to Your Company”

Ask any Lakers fan about the team’s last season, and you’ll find that the word “disappointment” might be an understatement. The Los Angeles Lakers, one of the greatest teams in National Basketball Association (NBA) history, didn’t win a single game in the postseason this year — and it was the first time they didn’t make it to the May playoffs since 1978. It could be considered the team’s worst season of all time. Is this failure — or could it be something else?

First, let’s start by defining “failure.” This is a topic I speak on a lot and I’ve come to discover that the two most common definitions of failure are “an unsuccessful person, enterprise, or thing,” or “a lack of success.” But here’s the interesting thing about these common definitions: They’re both subjective. If a “successful” Lakers season was to exceed a .500 average of wins-to-losses, then it’s time to celebrate. If “success” is defined by winning the championship, then the Lakers failed. Which is it? It all depends on the individual — or team.

So, by this definition, was the Lakers’ season a failure? ESPN’s J.A. Adande explained it perfectly: “Never in league history has there been a greater gap between expectations and their results.” This isn’t a matter of failure or success; it’s a matter of skewed expectations. And that’s not just something a team can control. It’s something that a team — or a business — creates, carries, and encourages.

Great Expectations

Anticipation and failure go hand-in-hand. In basketball, the link is obvious: Media and fans turn excitement into larger-than-life expectations, which almost always end in disappointment. But it isn’t limited to sports: Business leaders often are caught in the same paradox. They have to speak with certainty and conviction to bring their new endeavors to life; when things don’t go as well as planned, they’re left with displeased investors and disappointed customers.

Shareholders and stock analysts want to know that leadership is making wise investments, and employees want their leaders to be confident in their vision. And both groups are frustrated when that expectation doesn’t come to fruition. That’s why the best leaders aren’t the ones who try to predict success or failure. They’re the ones who can effectively manage internal and external expectations.

Leadership is Key

The Lakers’ story proves it: Having the greatest talent and a solid game plan doesn’t ensure success. And in the business world, the actions that create success and failure aren’t always defined with black-and-white clarity, either. Often, the difference is in the leadership that’s motivating players and strategies. That’s why the same kind of conversations should be happening in the locker room and in executives’ offices.

Here are a few ways that leaders can support their teams through stressful situations with high expectations:

• Communication. Leaders need to hear the challenges that their teams are facing and guide them through the journey effectively, empathetically, and clearly.

• Emotional intelligence. Leaders need be able to recognize when a key employee is about to burn out — just like a coach needs to realize when a tired player needs to rest before he injures himself.

• Encouragement. Sometimes, a leader or coach just needs to give encouragement through a difficult period. Star employees — like star athletes — are extremely self-motivated and hold themselves to very high standards. When times get tough, they often blame themselves. While these stars may seem superhuman, they still need encouragement from a strong leader.

If the Lakers’ coaches take the time to truly understand what happened during their season, we can expect to see great things next year. It’s not going to be easy: Creating, executing, and perfecting a successful leadership strategy can take years, with unavoidable conflicts and problems. But as long as team members and leaders are all learning from their failures along the way, the investment isn’t a wasted one. It’s an opportunity to grow.

Renew, Rethink, and Rebuild

After this last season, how should the Lakers move forward? After a bad year, failed product, or lost account, how should business leaders forge ahead? It’s the same answer for businesses and sports teams alike: honest, thoughtful reflection and well-planned action.

It’s always worthwhile to take time to self-assess, whether you’re looking at quarterly goals or a season. The Lakers’ coaches need to take a hard look at the past decade or two and reevaluate the strategy of using older players in key positions for long time periods. The same strategy applies to business, too. Managers and executives need to take the time to reflect on their leadership process and their employees’ talents and weaknesses. No one wants to admit to failure, but choosing to ignore it means you’re even more likely to repeat it. It’s important to discover the root cause, confront it, and then share those lessons with the entire team.

Next season, the Los Angeles Lakers might emerge as a stronger, smarter, and more self-aware team than ever before. That’s why failure isn’t always necessarily a “failure” — sometimes, it’s just another way to forge a path to success.

This weekend electric vehicle (EV) charging company Better Place announced that they are shuttering the company and liquidating their assets (WSJ Article).  Over the previous few years, Better Place had raised more than $850m in venture funding from well-known investors like Morgan Stanley, GE Capital, HSBC and VantagePoint Capital Partners.  Armed with lots of money and ambition, Better Place wanted to revolutionize the automobile industry by allowing EV customers to have a monthly subscription to their fuel plan just like they did to their mobile phone plan.

Back in 2009 I was working for the consumer electronics retailer Best Buy to flesh out potential partnership opportunities in the electric vehicle industry.  At the time, we were talking with vehicle manufacturers and the companies that created the charging equipment for electric vehicles.  Better Place was one of the companies we had been in discussions with.  After only a few hours of meetings it had become obvious that they were going to struggle to survive.

Don’t get me wrong, Better Place had some incredibly smart people and they had identified some really innovative ways to monetize the EV charging industry but they also had a very lethal business combination.  Even with their intelligence and ingenuity, their business model was seriously flawed and they had an unbridled arrogance that pushed them to think that everyone else was wrong.

Earlier this year Better Place had shut down their United Stated and Australian operations to focus on their operations in Denmark and Israel (Forbes Article).  On May 25, 2013, Better Place finally filed for bankruptcy in Israel and is putting their assets up for sale.  Taking a few minutes to better understand the Better Place failure can help future generations of entrepreneurs looking to revolutionize an industry.

Why was the Better Place business model flawed?

1. Ensure that your business model and your technology are in sync.  Climate and driving habits can dramatically affect a battery’s performance.  Better Place wanted to use their smart charging software in vehicles and in their charging stations to control how much charge a vehicle would need.  Their flaw was in their modeling when they treated the battery as if it were a completely fungible energy source.  Their processes equated swapping an EV battery like exchanging liquid propane (LP) tank where a customer takes an empty tank to a store and exchanges it for an identical full tank.  The problem was that not every EV battery was equal.  The “treatment” of the battery could greatly influence its performance.  Cold weather and hard driving could greatly reduce the battery’s ability to retain a charge and thus impact the vehicle’s range.  Take this fact and add consider that the battery is the most expensive element in these cars, easily exceeding $10,000, and it becomes easy to see why some customers won’t want to swap their batteries.  Back to the LP example, many American’s already have anxiety over swapping their new and shiny propane tank with an old and rusty one.
2. Does your business model necessitate that the industry adopts a standard?  The Better Place battery swapping model would work best if global manufacturers had agreed to a battery standard (size, design, etc).  In smaller socialized states it would be much easier for the government to require one battery standard used for electric vehicles.  But in the US we already had moved beyond that option.  General Motors (GM) had already put in more than a decade on their battery research for the Chevy Volt and they were not likely to want to share that technology with their competitors.  GM had recognized the importance of temperature on the battery and had built in a separate heating and cooling system just for the battery itself.  GM also thought they had a superior safety design with their unique T-shaped battery that ran along the middle of the vehicle to protect it further.  The number of battery types scheduled for the US market was at least five: General Motors Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Ford Focus Electric, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and the Tesla Roadster.  If we add in the cost of each of these batteries and the design changes necessary we see why battery swapping wasn’t going to work in the US.
3. The entire battery swapping model hinged on vehicle sales rates.  Finally, Better Place had expected their batter swapping stations to cost upwards of $500,000 each to build.  They also estimated that these stations would need to be spaced about 25 miles apart to be most effective.  Based on robust EV sales it would take years or decades for Better Place to recoup their initial build costs for these stations.  In contrast, a home or office Level 2 vehicle charging unit would run customers $500-$1500 depending on the manufacturer.  Since 2008, there have been approximately 100,000 plug-in electric vehicles sold in the United States.  The sales numbers are hardly enough for anyone to breakeven when building an EV battery swapping stations.

Battery swapping might have worked in a country that allowed for centralized planning but it was severely flawed model in a capitalist marketplace where customers aren’t keen on swapping their good battery for a bad one and manufacturers aren’t keen on giving up their competitive advantage in battery technology.  Poor sales were the final straw that broke the camel’s back and killed EV battery swapping… at least for now.

Updating with a couple of other interesting articles on Better Place and and the future of Electric Vehicles:

• The Washington Post – What Better Place’s bankruptcy tells us about the future of electric cars
• The Wall Street Journal – To Spark Buyers for Electric Cars, Drop the Price to Nearly $0

Last week I spent four days playing eight rounds of golf in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with 19 other guys.  That is 144 holes in just over 96 hours.  Before you ask the question the answer is yes!  Yes, we are absolutely a little crazy!  We are also equally passionate about the game of golf.  Through this marathon of golf I noticed that something happened to us all when we are playing.  On the golf course, just as in the office, we were adjusting to our environment and influencing each other’s behavior.

The complexity of golf is one of the reasons I love it so much.  As with most sports after a certain level of proficiency it becomes a completely mental game.  Once that happens your score can be as easily determined by your mood, what you had for breakfast that day, or who you are on the course with.  One of my favorite quotes on the complexity of the game comes from Arnold Palmer.

“Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening – and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.” – Arnold Palmer

On this year’s golf trip we had several new guys join the group.  A couple of the new guys were really skilled players but most of them were like me, somewhere slightly better than average.  What I always find interesting with golf is how some good golfers have bad days and some average golfers have great days.  But in the end most of us continue to huddled around our handicaps.

This year I noticed something else, how the players in a foursome seemed to learn and feed off of one another.  The average players who were paired with a good player seemed to be taking on a few of their good habits (i.e. better tempo, better course management, etc.).  The inverse was also true in that the good players were sometimes taking on bad habits (faster swings, poor course management, etc.).  Throughout the week we definitely were influencing one another just by being present.  We were watching the actions of each other consciously or unconsciously.  I realized that this was the same phenomenon that I have been writing about in business.

In business we are continually observing our environment, consciously or unconsciously, and making adjustments in our behaviors.  A lot of my work focuses on how individuals adjust their risk-taking behaviors after they see how leaders address failure within the organization.  If the consequences of failure are too severe then the individual will reduce their risk-taking to a more modest level.  They are continually absorbing their environment and learning from the actions of others.

Psychologist Albert Bandura had pioneered work on the idea of “learning from and influencing others” in his research on Social Learning Theory.  The basic premise of Bandura’s research was that most human behavior is learned observationally.  We watch what others do and then we model that behavior.

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.” – Albert Bandura 1977

Bandura’s conclusions shouldn’t be that shocking to any parent who has spent time observing their child learning a new activity.  The child watches another child or an adult and then mimics that behavior.  This process continues to happen over and over again throughout our entire lives.

So if we agree that most of our behaviors are learned by observing the actions and reactions of others, why are we not more purposeful in creating environments that reinforce the behaviors we want?  Why are our rules and policies developed for a one size fits all application without taking the time to understand how they are really affecting behaviors?

The example of this that I continually see is when an organization is trying to drive new innovation projects.  These projects are risky in nature and have a high rate of failure.  Leaders want their employees to take a risk and drive these innovation initiatives but they don’t have a plan in place for when the project fails.  At best the employees are forced to wear the “Scarlet Letter F” around the office until they are deemed worthy to move on to their next assignment.  At worst they might be fired immediately.  This is incredibly short sighted behavior because all of their other employees are watching what happens.  They see the actions and reactions.  These possible future innovators are undeniably going to adjust their behaviors.

Whether we like it or not we are continually influencing each other through our actions, our behaviors, and our policies.  If we want people to continue to innovate, to continue to tak risks then we need to create policies that promote the right behaviors.  Whether on the golf course or in the board room the best we can do is understand this fact and be mindful to influence each other in a positive way.  That is unless you have money riding on the match… and then all bets are off.  Fore!

Food For Thought:

• How does your organization negative influence behaviors through policies?
• Do you notice how the behavior of colleagues influences your decision making?
• Do you notice how the behavior of friends influences your decision making?