Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

data can be used as an accountability shield, deflecting responsibility for a judgment call. People are more comfortable making decisions based on hard data in part because they can fall back on that data if the decision turns out to be wrong.

One of the biggest mistakes is fixating on metrics that don’t matter.

data informed rather than data driven.

People can also be biased about which data they marshal. And we’ve all seen that people tend to privilege their own data over that of others.

If people ask in a true spirit of interest about the problems others are wrestling with, remarkable bridges of understanding can be built.

we had cultivated the practice of asking people about the nature of problems they were tackling rather than assuming an understanding of them.

“Can you help me understand what leads you to believe that’s true?”

That respect for one another’s intelligence and genuine desire to discover the bases of colleagues’ views drove intense mutual questioning and kept it mostly productive and civil, if often quite colorful. The team also modeled this vigorous questioning for employees in many forums, openly debating one another.

If you want to know what people are thinking, there is no good replacement for simply asking them, best of all face to face.