Link to the study: Error culture can be expanded in many companies
Interesting tension between the perception of employees and their managers - around two thirds of managers believe that there is an open culture of discussion in their company. Employees are more skeptical. The EY study shows that there is a need.
In general, neither bosses nor subordinates seem to find it easy to admit mistakes. The fear of losing face or even a job dominates.
GL meeting: One error culture please!
"We need a culture of error," demands the HR manager at the meeting. The controller clearly dislikes this: "So you want more mistakes in our company?" - "Of course not," replies the HR manager, "I want a more constructive and learning approach to mistakes!"
The controller's anger is written all over his face: "Every mistake costs money! Our money. Big mistakes cost even more money! Will your error culture reduce the error rate? Can you guarantee that?" Silence in the room.
The HR manager smiles at the controller and counters: "The error rate today is already higher than in your pretty Excel charts. Yes, despite ISO standards and total quality management. Why is that? Because employees are afraid to report errors, so mistakes are covered up wherever possible. And if we in the company are not aware of the mistakes made, we cannot learn from them. And so they are repeated over and over again. This constantly and repeatedly costs a lot more money!" Silence in the room again.
When we listen to members of the Pilot Impuls management team, they often talk about a culture of learning, trust or beneficial error management that they would like to see in their company. In reality, implementation often seems more difficult - but it is definitely worth it! Not only in medical teams or in aviation. Companies such as Toyota, Netflix and others are considered pioneers.
Of course, these companies also want to minimize costly mistakes in production. This is why they communicate to their employees that they want to learn from mistakes that have been made. The primary concern is not who made the mistake, but what went wrong, how and why. It must therefore be worse to cover up a mistake than to make one. This attitude must be exemplified by managers at all levels!
Companies undergoing digital upheaval must implement a learning error culture. With rapid developments in technology, companies are entering uncharted territory with new products and services. Not everything will be successful. A working atmosphere that encourages learning progress and at the same time is prepared to tolerate mistakes in order to learn from them is the healthy basis. Only in this way can employees develop new ideas without fear, which ultimately leads to an acceleration of the transformation.
Helping companies to implement a learning error culture is our passion at Pilot Impuls. Because we are convinced that it creates added value.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/studie-fehlerkultur-vielen-unternehmen-ausbaubar-philippe-ammann/
