The central theme in Eduardo Briceno’s book “The Performance Paradox” is about creating environments with combine a focus on performance with a focus on learning.
Environments that are overly focused on performance burn people out. Environments who focus entirely on learning don’t succeed because learning happens best when there is some tension.
Two stories stuck out to me. The first was about Beyonce’s routine while she’s on tour. Every night on tour, she reviews the entire performance video. By the time her team wakes up the next morning, they would have received notes from Beyonce on the many things they all could have done better.
The next was from research by HBS professor Amy Edmondson examining error rates in hospitals. Logically, she hypothesized that more effective patient care teams made fewer errors.
But she found the opposite. It turns out the first step to solving errors is being aware of them and reporting them. The most effective teams created environments where everyone was encouraged to share mistakes and learn. More errors were a feature, not a bug.
Both of these point to what we can do to create learning environments on our teams. First, create frequent opportunities to reflect via “retros” (or retrospectives) that help everyone grow from mistakes and lessons learnt. Second, encourage conversations about mistakes. The more we’re aware of them, the more likely we’re learning from them.
