The list of Second City theater’s distinguished alumni contains some of the brightest stars in the constellation of comedy. If you liked classics like “Groundhog Day,” “Uncle Buck,” “The Blues Brothers,” or “Ghostbusters,” you understand the depth of field the Chicago theater developed. And on TV, “Saturday Night Live” gave us some of the best creative work of its alums, from “Land Shark” to “ Roseanne Rosannadana.”
How does all of this relate to business management? Management is responsible for the workplace environment. And Mike Thomas, the author of, “The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater,” described the environment at Second City as creating comedy magic by “combining very high standards with a willingness to let its actors fail.”
That is a powerful formula and an excellent way to set up your organization if you are running a creative business or a creative element within a larger business.
We know all too well the results of obsessively risk-adverse management substituting pandering for creativity. That’s how we end up with “franchised” movies — sequels, prequels, and reboots of earlier, successful movies.
In the business world recently there has been a flood of advice suggesting managers should restructure their organizations to be more creative and to foster an environment where mistakes and failure are accepted as evidence of creative thinking and risk-taking. Interestingly, high standards aren’t mentioned.
This is good advice if it is applied to enterprises where creative energy, innovation, and talent make or break the company. It is very dangerous advice and likely to lead to unhappiness all around, though, if it is taken to mean all companies or even simply all parts of a company.
Creative thinking is a companion to high standards, not a substitute for them. To survive and flourish, even the most creative film makers, for example, need error-free financial records and reports that meet high standards. Businesses need to innovate and change, but on any given day or night they need our energy, skill, and enthusiasm more than they need creativity.
Most of the work in most companies is not all that creative. Success means getting the job done in the great here and now, not dreaming about how it might be done better. If everybody is thinking outside the box, there’s a real risk that the boxes won’t get shipped on time to the customer.
That’s not to say that managers should discourage suggestions. Quite the contrary, good managers always welcome new ideas. Some of the best ideas often will come from the workers who know the systems and processes best, but these ideas need to be thought through and tested.
Another reason why we should be careful about taking creativity and risk-taking advice literally, though, is that most of us do not need encouragement to make mistakes. We already make enough of them.
Mistakes are all too common in most businesses and the way these errors are dealt with will often determine the success or failure of a company. Entrepreneurs and CEO’s, then, have to ensure that managers know how to acknowledge, correct, reduce and, to the extent possible, eradicate them.
Some business errors are whoppers. Just a few months ago, for example, Bank of America reported a $4 billion accounting error, and even more recently Walgreen’s admitted a $1 billion mistake.
Mistakes, while usually smaller, are common enough and serious enough in business to demand that good managers need a way to deal with them.
When members of your team make a mistake, there are ways to shape the way you deal with it that usually lead to positive results. There are three aspects to remember about mistakes made by your team:
- If you recruited and trained the right people, they probably feel worse about the mistake than you do. Recognize this, restate your faith in them, and encourage them to learn from the error by helping you make any necessary changes to work flow, systems, audits or anything else that will reduce the possibility of a repetition.
- Whoppers excepted, most mistakes are survivable, unless repeated. You and your team should plan on surviving and meeting your goals: inhale, exhale, heads up, shoulders back, and full speed ahead.
- Mistakes that affect customers should be treated as marketing opportunities. By making your response timely, sincere, and an energetic effort to make whole the customer’s disappointment, you can distinguish your business from your competition — often turning an occasional buyer into a lifetime, loyal customer…the rock foundation of great companies.
Managing your team’s mistakes properly will keep them from managing you and damaging your company. Mistakes that you or your boss make require a different approach, and they will be addressed in a separate column.
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