Safe-space battlefield

Two factors contribute to good performance for learning organizations: making mistakes and having a safe working environment. With these research findings, US Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School captures the importance of psychological safety for companies. However, she does not really clarify how leaders should achieve this status. In a recent interview, she advises that leaders should ask questions – and not closed yes/no questions, but open ones. And listen with genuine interest, although she herself admits that this is rather obvious.

George Kohlrieser, professor of leadership at IMD Business School in Lausanne, also writes in a recent column that the foundation for a creative team is psychological safety. Team members must be able to express their ideas without the fear of being ridiculed or even punished, he says. Kohlrieser cites Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, as an example. Nadella has encouraged this approach by changing corporate culture from a know-it-all to a learn-it-all mindset. But again, it is not revealed how this can be achieved.

Business war game

I recently facilitated a business war game at the European supply chain leadership team of a large manufacturer of personal care products and cosmetics. During this day, I realized that this is the ideal set-up to create a ‘safe space’. In the first phase of a business war game, participants describe and visualize the company’s ‘battlefield’ with its key actors (individuals, companies and organizations) and factors (circumstances). In the second phase, participants break up into small groups, each playing one of the enemies (existing and potential competitors).

It is precisely in this second phase that I encourage participants to attack all the weaknesses of their own company like competitors. Individuals who have seen areas for improvement for years but have not been heard or do not feel safe to express themselves go all out in this phase. Participants are allowed and required to say anything to come up with a creative and surprising attack on their own company. This is also how all frustrations about tentative improvement processes came out in the recent workshop at the cosmetics manufacturer.

Concrete action plan

After presenting enemy attacks in the business war game, the leader determines the most likely and dangerous actions of competitors. The teams then break up again and devise an innovative plan to foil these attacks. A concrete action plan emerges from the pitches of these innovations and strategic improvement points, which means increased resilience for the company. For leaders, it is then essential that employees dare to hold each other accountable for the agreed necessary actions after such a workshop. If this is not the case, then get the visualized battlefield out again and discuss it with the group. Guaranteed success!

Martijn Lofvers, Co-founder Supply Chain Companions