There is a lot of crossover between sales and sports, especially when it comes to the concepts of teamwork and winning. There are those who are calling the Miami Heat loss in six games to the Dallas Mavericks a failure in teamwork—not having watched too much of the series myself, I couldn't tell you.
Leadership expert John Hamm buys into the sales as sports metaphor fully.
He says that for any team, the only acceptable result should be winning. But in the business world, the “win or (almost) die trying” principle seems to falter.
These companies, he declares fail to win victories that should have been easily within their grasps because they’ve been infected with a disease he calls “failing elegantly.
“Failing elegantly is a very sophisticated and veiled set of coping behaviors by individuals, the purpose of which is to avoid the oncoming train of embarrassment when the cover comes off the lousy results that we’d prefer no one ever see,” said Hamm.
This occurs when people stop believing they can be successful and start devoting their energy to how best to lose.
He warned that "leaders must recognize the signs of an impending crisis of confidence and intervene with specific messages and actions aimed at getting everyone back into the winner’s mindset.”
The elements of failing elegantly are having a sophisticated explanation for the loss, and making sure we appear to have tried everything in our power to avoid this unwanted outcome. But, he notes, there are no style points for second place.
Among the common leadership mistakes include setting impossible goals. Leading the goal-setting process to arrive at objectives that are perfectly sized is very tricky work, but this effort has never been more important to success than it is today.
Taskmasters and pacesetting leaders need to learn the fine line between an invigorating challenge and a wholly deflating expectation. They also need to realize that everyone on the team may not share their level of maniacal commitment.
Hamm said, “Goals that are clearly beyond any reasonable confidence of achievement are worse than easy goals—they actually disengage your team’s energy. The predictable and natural response is ‘Why bother?’”
He said another problem is letting people get pseudo-wins by “majoring in the minors.” Very talented people can and do lose focus on the critical path problems that must be solved to transform an idea into reality. Those are often the knottiest problems, and sometimes we resist them for a period of time, preferring to create some satisfying momentum on simpler tasks, or ones that are simply more fun.
Leaders must redirect energy to the hard problems, realizing that it is human nature to drift from the tough stuff in favor of easier projects.
Third is tolerating “The dog ate my homework” and other common excuses. Without a clear line in the sand defining acceptable and unacceptable, a blurred line between success and failure follows. When you’re failing elegantly, he said, you tolerate excuses. Massive amounts of energy are poured into sophisticated justifications and rationalizations for certain courses of action, and there is veiled blame for everything outside the team’s control.
"There is tolerance of the simple fact that we don’t have control over every variable in the game, so at times—through either forces outside our influence or simply not having run our best play—the results are not as we wish,” Hamm said.
Allowing sloppiness and imprecision, which almost always stem from being lazy or uncommitted or not having enough pride in the finished work. High reliability organizations never allow sloppiness, because they know it equals death. Unusually excellent leader shave a zero tolerance policy for sloppiness," he declared.
Encouraging “editorialized” data in the feedback process, which could undermine the overall strategy, until the likelihood of success itself begins to plummet.
The follow up is failing to measure what matters. The right metrics will serve you in enormously useful ways. "The one thing you must have, to make the real-time course corrections that will inevitably be required, is good data. Invest in the design and the machinery required to gather, analyze, and present the data you need—quickly, accurately, and easily. This, more than anything else, will serve your leadership needs in the arena of live ammo—where the Hamm declared “Passive acceptance of failure, and the rationalization that always goes with it, is a cancer that can begin anywhere in the organization, then metastasize to every office, including your own. You can prevent it by setting clear and precise standards of behavior for everyone on the team, as well as clear consequences for the violation of those standards. And you can control it through continuous and open communication with every member of your team.”
