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How To Encourage Failing Loudly In Your Team
David Isaac Murray
Entrepreneur, computer scientist and product designer based in Silicon Valley. He is currently CTO of Doctor.com.
It’s safe to say that as babies, our ability to cry was crucial to our survival because it allowed for a clear, vocal way for our parents to know there was a problem that needed solving. This isn’t unlike our day-to-day work on the job; it’s critical to have some sort of alarm or indicator of problems if we want them to be solved. Yet in most organizations, we often see failures occur that don’t get surfaced to those who need to know. These silent failures can be deadly, especially to organizations in fast-moving industries.
The idea of silent failure is usually associated with software engineering and development. It’s a big no-no in the fail-fast ideology, which reminds us that human beings make mistakes, and that software, as a product of human beings, is bound to have mistakes. In healthy tech cultures, developers are encouraged to allow their software to fail loudly. This means that, in essence, when your code hits an exception or unexpected error, it’s best practice to surface this failure explicitly (e.g., via email, filing a ticket, etc.). While it may seem to be an easier or even more polite response to fail silently, it takes away the ability for involved parties to address the problem, learn, or prevent it from happening again.
Silent Failure As A Human Resources Issue
When it comes to people, silent failure is a frequent, undiscussed problem for most organizations. It often insidiously derails teams, and it’s usually identified too late. If an employee feels disenfranchised from reporting issues to management or is unable to solve problems out of fear of conflict, major schisms can arise and burst seemingly out of nowhere. You’ve probably experienced this before or may even be experiencing this now. Silent failure breeds resentment and keeps employees from growing or moving on, and most of us are guilty of perpetuating the problem.
In my own experience at organizations with a silent failure culture, I’ve seen situations where employees felt they weren’t appreciated or compensated properly, and instead of advocating for themselves, they simply found another job. If this situation hits close to home, you’re not alone -- I’ve seen it recently myself. To save employees in this situation, companies are often forced to make counteroffers, and in a worst-case scenario you’re left with a workplace where this is the only way to get a raise. Unsurprisingly, this is incredibly demoralizing and leads to higher employee turnover.
For employees who don’t surface a desire to leave, you might say that a counteroffer situation is the employee’s fault. If he had communicated the stakes to upper management, you might say, they could have kept it more top of mind and been faster to react. He could have approached the team with tact and persistence to make his case known, and the team would have felt more prepared than they were when scrambling to make a counteroffer.
While this is true, the reality is that a culture that lacks frequent, varied feedback mechanisms at all levels of hierarchy breeds this type of behavior, no matter how bold, communicative or tactful the people are within it.
Empowering Your Team To Fail Loudly
The best way to encourage loud failure is to create an environment with arguably the most important team dynamic of psychological safety. This includes providing ample opportunities for employees to speak up and feel safe speaking their minds. Scheduled, regular feedback sessions are an excellent way to do this. It’s also great to create a process that will allow employees to give their feedback in varying degrees of anonymity. A few ideas on how to do this include:
Periodic happiness surveys sent to individuals.
Monthly or quarterly affinity diagrams completed in groups.
Weekly one-on-one meetings between supervisors and employees.
Regular performance reviews (annual at least, but quarterly can work well with a streamlined process).
Management reviews that all employees can participate in.
It’s important to make sure these efforts are mandatory and expected and that everyone participates, from interns up to the C-suite. Feedback systems become new ways to fail silently if they aren’t taken seriously or enforced at every level of your team.
Leading by example is also extremely important. Having extreme ownership by showing your team that you are willing to admit mistakes and work hard to fix them will empower them to speak up. Name your own failures openly and regularly. Also, when an employee comes to you with a problem that they feel they don’t have the power to fix, be their champion.
Personal Accountability In Silent Failure
Sometimes, our organizations just aren't going to have the outlets we wish we had to fail loudly, and we may not feel we have the power to change this. Nevertheless, we can still help ourselves and our colleagues. In order to fail loudly and effect change within our organization, we need to take personal responsibility and fail loudly, ideally with tact, persistence and vulnerability.
Even within a feedback-oriented environment, it’s important that we speak up tactfully and persistently, bringing up problems in creative ways. Sometimes, we need to be able to adapt our message to suit the needs of our audience -- this is what empathy is about. Whether we communicate laterally, up or down the chain of command, we need to be vocal, no matter how hard it may be. Luckily, these are all qualities that can be taught and nurtured by books, managers and friends, so where we are today hopefully will not be where we are tomorrow.
While none of this is easy, it’s always worth it. By encouraging the people we work with to fail loudly and advocating for varied feedback mechanisms within our organizations, we can all help avoid the issues that arise with silent failure. Our organizations will benefit in the long term, and we will likely be happier, both at work and at home, as a result.