The Fearless Organization book in 20 drawings

Creating Psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation and Growth

Hello! Glad to see you here.

I have started 2 years ago to draw the concepts or ideas that I found while reading, I do it for myself as a way to learn/memorize them better, but also share the sketchnotes around hoping they are valuable for others.

The drawings are personal, I try not to misrepresent the ideas, but there is always the filter of my own understanding / interest. Take this as a feature, not a bug! The visual summary can help you catch important aspects covered in the books, but wouldn’t remove the joy of discovering hidden pearls while reading it yourself.

This is the second visual summary in my drawing drawer, and I have more books already drawn, that I just need to organise in a summary. You can subscribe to see them when they will be available (it is free)!

Part I: The Power of Psychological Safety

Chapter 1: The Underpinning

In this first chapter, the Author Emy Edmonson describes how she accidentally found the concept while doing research about team performance.

She explains what psychological safety is:

-✅ A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking (ex: Pointing out an error, admit a mistake, share a new idea, candid feedback...)

And what psychological safety is not:

- ❌ Being nice / Eliminating stress / Trust (believing in someone)

She highlight the fact that psychological safety is key for high performance, engagement and innovation.

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Chapter 2: The Paper Trail

Psychological Safety is now a popular concept, but what we may not realize is that its importance is well documented and researched.

In the chapter 2, Amy Edmondson, go through the benefits found in the research, and some of the reason for the "Epidemic of Silence" often experienced in organizations.

Psychological Safety is related to better performance, learning behaviors, creativity, engagement, collaboration across disciplines & timezones and many more.

In a VUCA environment (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), the cost of Fear and Silence is tremendous, that should prompt leaders to focus on how safe their teams feel to speak-up.

The problem with voicing an opinion at work, is that there may be more benefit for an individual from staying silent compared to speaking up.

- Voicing will maybe bring benefits to the organisation AFTER some time
- Silence bring the benefit to the individual RIGHT AWAY (staying safe)

There are also some rules that we take for granted, that may lead to silence such as:

- Don’t criticize your boss’s project
- Speaking up bring career consequences
- Don’t make your boss look bad in front other, especially upliners

All those unwritten rule preventing speaking up also shield organization from all the benefit of a psychologically safe environment (Performance /Engagement / Learning).

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Chapter 3

In chapter 3, we see examples of real companies that had very public failures (VW, Wells Fargo, Nokia, the New York Federal Bank).

In all of them the fall was fueled by a culture of fear, and an inability from the leader to make surface, or hear bad news…

… In short a lack of psychological safety.

After seeing how a culture of fear can prevent valuable feedback and lead to large scale company failures, Amy proposes an agile approach to strategy.

Instead of a "Plan", she propose to frame Strategy as an Hypothesis, that through action, is being tested. That approach should make it easier to get quality feedback and course correct accordingly.

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Chapter 4

Culture of Cassandra

Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was a priestess with the gift of true prophecy, but cursed to never be believed.

In Chapter 4, Amy Edmondson give examples of the tragic cost of a Culture of Cassandra (warning dismissal) / Culture of Silence (being unable to raise problems).

Plane crash, Fukushima, dramatic medical errors.. and a little light of hope coming in the form of new possibility for expression through social media.

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Chapter 5

In chapter 5, we finally get examples of what a being fearless means.

The first example is Pixar, which we all know for their amazingly creative & innovating animated films. However, all those great end-products start pretty bad, and it is only through an institutionalized feedback process that they evolve into masterpieces.

Pixar calls it the "Braintrust":

- A group of colleagues, knowledgeable, trusted, that are tasked to give candid feedback to the director on all aspects of the movie

- A psychological safe environment (nobody is having his/her career challenged based on what they show). Failure is expected and part of the process

- The director stays in charge, he as no obligation to follow the Braintrust advices

- A shared goal, both the director and brainstrust have the same objective, to produce an animated movie better than the previous one.

The 2nd example of a company putting the emphasis on making sure critical opinions are heard, is Ray Dalio's Bridgewater.

The company's approach is found in Ray's book "Principles";

-🗣️Encouraging voicing critical opinion (it is framed as a moral imperative to share your insights to the group)

- 🪟Radical transparency, with an open library containing employee's assessments, including strength and weaknesses, personal action plan. This is combined with a focus on learning from your mistakes.
The transparency goes all the way to the top, with available recordings of every executive meetings.

- 🤼‍♂️Productive conflicts, with 3 types of conversations styles

1. Discussions include all, with no consideration of hierarchy, it is a free exchange of ideas.
2. Debates encourage passionate conflicts with your peers,
3. Teaching when there is a gap in knowledge.

Eileen Fisher considers herself a "don't knower" and tries to promote hearing multiple voices in a safe environment.

Meetings start in a mindful silence, and an object can be passed around to allow each one to speak. The focus of Eileen is creative energy through collaboration.

The company de-emphasize hierarchy and let employee be passionate and explore the aspects they care about.

Intelligent Failure

Google X has a strange way to see failure. If you fail, you get a bonus!

This is another example of practical ways companies implement psychological safety,

The Google X company is focusing on big, audacious, world changing ideas.
To avoid wasting ressources, a demanding evaluation process has been setup, that allows to stop a project at the first evidence of it going nowhere...

But it can be hard to let go and accept failure, which is why at Google X, it is celebrated & respected.
If you kill your project, you get bonuses, get to share your experience, might even be promoted,
Failing is made safe!

“Real failure is trying something, learning it doesn't work, then continuing to do it anyway.”- Astro Teller, Google X CEO.

Caring for people

The last example of actively creating a psychologically safe environment is Barry-Wehmiller,

The company's main guiding Leadership principle is:
"We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people"

This principle is translated into real daily action, aimed at:
- Building trust,
- Measuring and trying to increase the well being of employees
- Involving the factory workers in the design process

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Chapter 6

The Hudson river landing starts chapter 6, it demonstrates how a safe effective communication (promoted by the Crew Ressource Management Training) contributed to save the lives of the passenger and crew of the aircraft.

The CRM training aim to encourage a speaking up culture in the cockpit, and emphasize the need for captains to listen to the concerns from co-pilots and crews.

In case you somehow missed that incredible Hudson River landing story, it has been immortalized in a film named after the pilot "Sully".

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Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is all about showing how psychological safety can be used in the context of health and life threatening environments.

First, we encounter the company DaVita, which put a big emphasis on employee well-being, knowing that it would translate in a better experience for their patients (the company help with kidney dialysis).

Their motto is "One for all, All for one",

The idea is that employees should have a voice, and that working for the company means having shared responsibility and obligation. The company should be there for it's employees and they should be able to bring there whole selves and passion to the work.

Lekgotla is a village assembly meeting, where everyone sit in a circle and can expose his/her opinion uninterrupted and without criticism. The discussion goes on until a consensus is reached.

This is what Cynthia Carroll, a CEO of an international mining company used when she was struggling to get real feedback from the miners on their safety concerns.

Asking is usually not enough if you don't have first a psychologically safe environment, without fear of your supervisor.

Cynthia Carroll, by finding a culturally appropriate way to gather inputs, and her relentless focus on the safety of the miners managed to reduce by 62% the number of death, and influenced the all industry to get safer processes.

Do you remember the Fukushima nuclear plant the did NOT meltdown?

Naohiro Masuda was leading the group that managed to reconnect the power, and avoid the tragic fate of the sister plant. He used a whiteboard, and an honest presentation of the facts, inspiring the team to decide to take on the risky mission.

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Chapter 8

Changing the frame,

The frame is the assumptions and beliefs we have on top of the reality. In a lot of organizations those belief make it unsafe for employees to speak-up, admit mistakes, feel psychological safe.

Ex: I need to hide my mistake or I will be punished.

The frame can be changed when leaders are actively promoting an alternate view,

Ex: We have seen in a previous drawings about Google X's way of defining failure as learning, and promoting people killing their projects early.

Another way can be by changing the words being used,

Ex: Julie Morath, COO of a children hospital established “words to work by”, redefining the words to be used to avoid the feeling of shame/blame, and instead open the door to an open communication, that would improve the overall system.

Investigation --> became "study"
Error --> became "accident"
Etc.

Even if the fear is set aside, there is the need to make understandable WHY it is important to speak-up, what is the goal that need your input to be achieved.

Is it to get to zero-death for miners working in a dangerous environment?
Is it to prevent errors with patients?
Is it to get new ideas and innovate?
Is it for process improvements?

Etc..

For raising our voices, we need to see how it will contribute to a positive outcome.

So the second tip is "Emphasize the goal".

Now with the ground being prepared, you still need to invite concrete participation.

Invite Participation:

This can take multiple form(Focus group, one-one conversation, steering comitee...), But it needs to be done with genuine curiosity, asking specific people for specific input.

Example: Was everything as safe as you would like it to be this week?

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Congratulations! You managed to reach the end, and should now have an overview of the book “The Fearless Organization”!

If you liked the visual summary, maybe your colleagues or friends would do too?