When Being Wrong Warrants a Party

Learning not only to tolerate being wrong, but to actively embrace and even look for times we’re wrong is not natural. It violates our basic drive to survive and to have ourselves affirmed as being smart, or better or competitively superior. Even those who are naturally humble, still have a drive to get the right answer. 

But, the drive to be right can often get in the way of finding the optimal solution. It can lead us to stop exploring, or fail to see the flaws that may ultimately kneecap a project or goal. 

In last week’s newsletter I offered the notion of reframing as a way to make being wrong more palatable. Reframing is a powerful cognitive tool and it gives us the power to take any experience and look at it in a different way. This works because our reactions to everything are driven by the way we see them.

For little children going to bed seems like punishment because they see it as an exclusion from grown up activities. As adults we often reframe early bedtimes as a wonderful opportunity to read a book and relax, or to be intimate with a partner, or to refresh our minds for a big day tomorrow. When the frame conjures a positive emotion, the behavior becomes more attractive. 

One possible frame for being wrong is to consider the upside of discovering that flaw. It takes us closer to the truth —or to the best answer. 

But sometimes, being wrong per se isn’t the problem. Instead, we let our innate laziness get in the way of pushing for yet a better answer. We might discover something important if we kept at it instead of declaring a problem solved too early. But what’s in it for us to do that? It’s especially challenging in a world where everything is expected to be fast!

We can start by paying attention both to the up and downside of the two options: declaring the job is done and the problem solved too early, or, waiting to scrutinize it further and thereby discover flaws.

Ultimately, what matters in that is what is at stake. But we can easily underestimate those stakes. 

Sometimes, even in modern life, the stakes can be very high. If you are running a startup and select the wrong strategy, or price your product badly, the consequences can be significant. Maybe not world war three significant —but nonetheless, important.

Consider applying a bit of the scientific method to your own thinking. One way to think about this is to imagine a scenario far outside your own work —with stakes that are much higher than those business people usually have.

For example, what if you were a scientist trying to develop a life saving new compound? Just to make the stakes really high, let’s say it’s an antidote to chemical weapons—and that, if it works, can save innocent people who are experiencing fatal attacks. 

If your discovery works, lives can be saved by simply taking your pill immediately after a chemical attack. The upside is tremendous! But, such an amazing payoff can tempt us to hurry and declare victory too soon. That’s the one side of the two-sided coin — fast results to get to the upside.

But what are the stakes of getting it wrong? That’s the other side: Declaring victory prematurely and missing the fatal flaw.

If the pill isn’t perfect — if say, it works in the lab but ultimately only for 10% of the general population—people who take those pills will die in excruciating pain; even more pain than if they did nothing. 

When stakes are that high, imagine how easily we could transcend the impulse to protect our own egos. It simply matters too much! With those possible outcomes, each of us would become vigilant about testing and discovering any possibility we are wrong. We would actively seek our mistakes, After all, if we don’t find that out, the consequences would be unbearably awful. 

But, stakes are rarely that high. 

Nonetheless, we can cultivate a similar state of mind when we’re crafting strategy, making hiring decisions or choosing which technology partner to work with. Even without life and earth stakes, our own minds are flexible enough to conjure the cognitive landscape of serious consequences.

So, if you were to adopt that kind of determination to test your ideas and decisions, how would you start? And how would you bring your team along? 

One important step is simply to start practicing the conversation of operating as though the stakes were huge. Create a context like that and bring your team into it.

Then set up a structure that incentivizes wrongness instead of rightness. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive. But if you place a high value on the discovery of what does NOT work—highlight it, reward it and celebrate it —you start to whittle away the intrinsic drive to be right. 

The most important thing a leader can do is to model the joy of being wrong. That simple change in behavior starts a virtuous cycle in which people learn not only freely to admit they got something incorrect, or hit a wall, or discovered new information that obviates their plan —but they become better at doing that diligence. 

Give it a try. Start sharing your discoveries of inaccuracies and misguided ideas. It will seed a sea change in your culture and ultimately, your team’s results.

One way to support your team in building tools and culture like this is to offer them access to executive coaching. It’s a comparatively tiny investment for an extraordinary return in real results. Schedule a call with me to discuss how Beyond Better Coaching-as-a-Service could optimize your team’s performance.