to work. No, we give the child permission to fail. We don't sanction terminal failure, which would happen if the child fell over and nevergot up again. We encourage the child to keep trying. We do so by focusing on a natural desire to walk anyway. The
internal motive is so strong that the infant can take a lot of failures on the road to success. After bumps, tears and frustra-
tion, the child eventually gets there. An ACE team is rather like an infant learning to walk, reaching for success through lots of falling and plenty of rehearsal. Organizations and team leaders, and the team itsele must learn to tolerate this kind of failure. which is not terminal' What exactly is terminal failure? Let's look at the theatre again.
being so 'way out'
it
A top team avoids
could put the entire organization at risk. Running a large organization like the Royal National Theare, for example, director Richard Eyre can experiment with a new team in any one of three different company theatres. Yet he knows exactly how much budget and energy to invest before collapse would threaten the entire operation. Whatever creative risks he takes, they must never jeopardize a theatre's life.
"
lfyou don't instill in your people the ability to fail, they
will never take risks. But when they fail there's no reason why they should take the whole ship down with
them.
ll
Michoel Eisner
- Heod of Disney Corporotion
This constraint on Eyre is similar to what some companies call 'below the water line' decisions. As with a ship, you can make all kinds of mistakes, as long as you don't allow it to be seriously holed below the water line, when the chances of survival are small. Similarly, teams and managers need to be allowed a large range of freedom in the decisions they take. But no decision must be of the 'below the water line' variety, where it could sink the company So an ACE team is never reckless. It's willing to face failure in the interests of growth and change, but will rarely bet the company. That is, it will never willingly court a failure of such serious proportions as to damage either its own or the organization's chances of
survival.
il0