Richard Rumelt wrote one of the best strategy books I’ve ever read:“ Good Strategy, Bad Strategy“, and highlights three central premises of “Guiding Policy”, “Coherent Actions”, and “Strategic Diagnosis. This is a great article by JP Castlin on Rumelt’s “Guiding Policy”. Castlin states, “ it is enough to think of guiding policies as means of resolving uncertainty about what to do, about how to compete, and about how to organize.” In framing silence as an unethical choice, Dalio is taking a more extreme stance than I have adopted. But it's worth reflecting on this idea, which to me implies that you owe your colleagues the expression of your opinion or ideas; in a sense, those ideas belong to the collective enterprise, and you therefore don't have the right to hoard them.” The final chapter of the book is all about making it happen. It talks about setting the stage, inviting participation (with some guidance on the power of great questions), and responding in a way that builds safety. These are great guiding principles but exactly how you put them into practice will take a bit of trial, error and practice. You’ll need to find the interventions that work best for your team or organisation.

Fearless Organization Engage - Fearless Organization

In 2012, Google’s project Aristotle set out to answer the question ‘What makes a Google team effective’? Their research found that psychological safety was by far the most important factor in creating effective teams. A productive response is concerned with future impact. Punishment sends a powerful message, and an appropriate one if boundaries were clear in advance. Indeed, it is vital to send messages that reinforce values the company holds dear. However, it is equally vital not to inadvertently send a message that says, “diverse opinions simply won’t be tolerated here,” or “one strike and you’re out.” Such messages reduce psychological safety and ultimately erode the quality of the work. In contrast, a message that reinforces the values and practices of a learning organization is, “it’s okay to make a mistake, and it’s okay to hold an opinion that others don’t like, so long as you are willing to learn from the consequences.” The most important goal is figuring out a way to help the organization learn from what happened. And so, if there is ambiguity about public self-expression related to company policies, then a productive response is one that engages people in a learning dialogue to better understand and improve how the company functions.Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on teaming, psychological safety, and organizational leadership. She has written and coauthored five books and numerous articles on the subjects.

The Fearless Organization - Google Books

I honestly feel I could give this book 10 stars--it sure deserves them. We all should read and give away this book to our bosses.....Too bad some of our bosses do not care about reading nor learning about how to run companies better...I do like the example about health care--the example of a nurse afraid of telling the doctor anything--and what is more amazing--it keeps happening. Why? because some Doctors still not capable to understand how to work better together--how to encourage freedom of speech at work--even from our helpers. Why? Because these same helpers are the best to point us in the right direction-sometimes, if we want to improve our quality of service. She asked a question. “Was everything as safe as you would like it to have been this week with your patients?”5 The question – genuine, curious, direct – was respectful and concrete: “this week,” “your patients.” Its very wording conveys genuine interest. Curiosity. It makes you think. Interestingly, she did not ask, “did you see lots of mistakes or harm?” Rather, she invited people to think in aspirational terms: “Was everything as safe as you would like it to be?” I am a self-confessed software delivery and DevOps enthusiast, and I’m sure it won’t be a surprise to anyone who knows me that I regard psychological safety as being an essential part of many DevOps and agile practices. As Edmondson puts it, it’s the “extra ingredient” that enables other success factors. Practices such as blameless post-mortems which can only work when people feel safe to make themselves vulnerable - to talk about problems and mistakes, and where failure is generally regarded as being a Good Thing because it enables us to reflect and learn and improve. A leader must set the stage by framing the work (setting the expectations and clarifying the need for voice) and emphasizing the purpose (identifying what’s at stake, why it matters and for whom) so that he accomplishes an atmosphere of shared expectations and meaning. workarounds delay or prevent process improvement. The problems that trigger workarounds can be seen as small signals of a need for change in a system or process. The workaround bypasses the problem, thereby silencing the signal by getting the immediate job done – but getting it done in a way that is inefficient over the longer term.”How psychologically safe a person feels strongly shapes the propensity to engage in learning behaviors, such as information sharing, asking for help, or experimenting. It also affects employee satisfaction . This is a great exercise in visioning – particularly useful for a team who want to find their north star, or determine what their higher level ambitions are. It’s called “Cover Stories” or “Newspaper Headlines”.“ This game is worth playing because it not only encourages people to “think big,” but also actually plants the seeds for a future that perhaps wasn’t possible before the game was played.“ We offer various ways to engage with the growing body of work around measuring and improving psychological safety.

Psychological Safety – Amy C. Edmondson

I think the main thesis is true, but this book doesn't present any convincing evidence. It's just the usual random citations to academic studies (e.g. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?do..., where the term only appears in the title). There's some case studies. There's Google's very overblown Aristotle project. There's no formal or detailed publications on this, just some vague blogposts. Google also acts completely contrary to what it preaches in these blogposts. Low levels of psychological safety can create a culture of silence. They can also create a Cassandra culture – an environment in which speaking up is belittled and warnings go unheeded.”Free personal scan: get a gauge on how you perceive your personal level of psychological safety in your current organization. Free forever, but no context or benchmarks against your colleagues. Paid surveys As I've written in prior books and articles, more and more of that teamwork is dynamic – occurring in constantly shifting configurations of people rather than in formal, clearly-bounded teams.4 This dynamic collaboration is called teaming.5 Teaming is the art of communicating and coordinating with people across boundaries of all kinds – expertise, status, and distance, to name the most important. But whether you're teaming with new colleagues all the time or working in a stable team, effective teamwork happens best in a psychologically safe workplace.”