Not a news flash, but important: negative experiences are more potent than positive ones

In today's New York Times, business writer Alina Tugend (quoted elsewhere on this site) takes up a topic we know well on this site - the potency of negative experiences, and their ability to outweigh seemingly equal positive ones ("Praise Is Fleeting, but Brickbats We Recall"). A key excerpt:

Roy F. Baumeister, a professor of social psychology at Florida State University, captured the idea in the title of a journal article he co-authored in 2001, “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” which appeared in The Review of General Psychology. “Research over and over again shows this is a basic and wide-ranging principle of psychology,” he said. “It’s in human nature, and there are even signs of it in animals,” in experiments with rats.

As the article, which is a summary of much of the research on the subject, succinctly puts it: “Bad emotions, bad parents and bad feedback have more impact than good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones.”

Tugend also quotes one of our favorite authors, Teresa Amabile, describing the research that formed the basis for her book The Progress Principle:

“We found that of all the events that could make for a great day at work, the most important was making progress on meaningful work — even a small step forward,” said Professor Amabile.... “A setback, on the other hand, meant the employee felt blocked in some way from making such progress. Setbacks stood out on the worst days at work.”

After analyzing some 12,000 diary entries, Professor Amabile said she found that the negative effect of a setback at work on happiness was more than twice as strong as the positive effect of an event that signaled progress. And the power of a setback to increase frustration is over three times as strong as the power of progress to decrease frustration.

“This applies even to small events,” she said.

Learning from mistakes, missteps, bad experiences, etc., is so powerful because mistakes "make a deep imprint," in the words of Paul Schoemaker. The warm glow of success can cause us, by contrast, to soften and shrug off what we could have learned. Don't we want to use bad experiences to our greatest benefit?

It's not directly mentioned in the article, but I'll add that a sense of humor, especially with respect to oneself, is a significant help when it comes to accepting and learning from negative experiences.

Best Books of the Year 2011

It has been a spectacular year for books about mistakes and learning from them. Here's the list of must-haves:

1. Brilliant Mistakes, Paul Schoemaker. Five years after publishing a terrific HBR article on the subject, Schoemaker celebrates mistakes as, in Joyce's words, "portals of discovery," a way of navigating through a largely unpredictable world. And he presents a compelling case for making "deliberate mistakes"--creating projects that go against the conventional wisdom in a strategic way, in order to uncover invalid assumptions and shifts in the environment. From Schoemaker: Companies strive for error elimination, hiring advisers and relying on sophisticated management tools such as Six Sigma. It’s little wonder, then, that most decision-making books follow suit, encouraging you to focus narrowly on mistake avoidance today rather than provoking you to plan for the stream of decisions that you will face tomorrow.

2. The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. A mammoth research project that tracked the activity and temperament of dozens of workers and managers on a daily basis brought forth a simple, startling insight: workers are happier and more productive when they make continual progress toward meaningful goals, and unhappy/unmotivated when obstacles are put in their way. The application of this insight improves both managers' effectiveness and workers' self-regard. Why is this book on the Mistake Bank list? Because the authors urge managers and workers to face reality, even if it's unpleasant, and handle setbacks with grace and persistence. From the book: By its very nature, meaningful work is hard; people often get the greatest satisfaction from overcoming the most difficult challenges. Failure is inevitable along the path to innovation. Though you should try to minimize obstacles and setbacks under your control, you can never create a problem-free bubble for your people. You can't nourish inner work life if you drive yourself and your team crazy trying to avoid all problems. Rather, focus on providing people with the catalysts and nourishers they need to overcome the obstacles they will inevitably face.

3. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman. One of the fathers of behavioral economics and a Nobel Prize winner, Kahneman sums up the lessons he's learned in his decades of studying human nature - and is not above using himself as a subject. Kahneman writes: One of [my] themes is that people who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it. We were required to predict a soldier's performance in officer training and in combat, but we did so by evaluating his behavior over one hour in an artificial situation. This was a perfect instance of a general rule that I call WYSIATI, "What you see is all there is." We had made up a story from the little we knew but had no way to allow for what we did not know about the individual's future, which was almost everything that would actually matter.

4. Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others, Justin Menkes. A book that illustrates what corporate senior leaders need to do to succeed. Menkes describes great executives' understanding of their own fallibility and their willingness to take responsibility for mistakes ("owning their missteps") as keys to flourishing in the pressure-cooker of corporate leadership. From Menkes: Leaders adjusting to a significant increase in responsibility invariably make many mistakes. Those who ultimately excel recognize and own these missteps quickly and use the experiences to grow into their positions of elevated authority and increased complexity. But for this learning curve to occur, it is absolutely crucial that they accept their role in these mistakes. If they have a low sense of agency, they cannot, and will fail.

5. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck. I'm cheating here - "Mindset" was published in 2006. But I didn't read it till this year, and without a doubt Dweck's research and writing are among the most influential in the learning field, especially among other academics. She was referenced in more of my reading than any other scholar (Kahneman was #2).

From Dweck: Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, describes the elite military pilots who eagerly embrace the fixed mindset. Having passed one rigorous test after another, they think of themselves as special, as people who were born smarter and braver than other people. But Chuck Yeager, the hero of The Right Stuff, begged to differ. “There is no such thing as a natural-born pilot. Whatever my aptitude or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime’s learning experience.… The best pilots fly more than the others; that’s why they’re the best.”

What were the best business books you read this year? Weigh in below in the comments section.

From "The Progress Principle": "You can't create a problem-free bubble" - Manage your team through inevitable setbacks

From "The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work," by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.

A manager creates a climate of psychological safety by focusing on the work and what can be learned from it, rather than berating subordinates for errors. More generally... a manager can sustain virtuous cycles of progress and positive inner work life in the face of inevitable setbacks that occur in any complex project. Contrast this to the blame and fear that prevailed throughout Karpenter Corporation. As a member of Karpenter's Domain team said, "Around here, not finding a solution is perceived as not being competent!"

This highlights an important fact. By its very nature, meaningful work is hard; people often get the greatest satisfaction from overcoming the most difficult challenges. Failure is inevitable along the path to innovation. Though you should try to minimize obstacles and setbacks under your control, you can never create a problem-free bubble for your people. You can't nourish inner work life if you drive yourself and your team crazy trying to avoid all problems. Rather, focus on providing people with the catalysts and nourishers they need to overcome the obstacles they will inevitably face. [p. 177]

[Excerpted from "The Progress Principle," by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, Harvard Business Press, (c) 2011. Reprinted by permission.]

From "The Progress Principle," face mistakes squarely

"The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work," by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, is the best business book I've read in a long, long time. The authors studied 12,000 diary entries, which tracked hundreds of workers across numerous working groups within several companies, and developed a fascinating and surprising picture of employees' "inner work lives"-- how they perceived themselves, their work, their leadership and companies. The crucial finding is reflected in the book's title: the most significant contributor to a rich and happy inner work life is continual progress (even modest progress) toward goals--the "progress principle."

The book is not about mistakes or learning from mistakes, but our favorite subject makes more than one appearance. Here's a short excerpt:

No matter how skilled people are, or how well designed and well executed the projects, problems and failures are inevitable in complex, creative work. We found that inner work life was much more positive when problems were faced squarely, analyzed, and met with plans to overcome or learn from them. Inner work life faltered when problems were ignored, punished, or handled haphazardly.

Learning from success mattered, too. Our participants' thoughts, feelings, and drives fared better when successes, even small ones, were celebrated and then analyzed for knowledge gained. They fared worse when success was ignored, or when its true value was questioned. [p 106]

Great advice on keeping a work diary

HBS professor Teresa Amabile, who has done some great writing on creativity at work, and co-author Steven Kramer have posted "Four Reasons to Keep a Work Diary" on HBR.org.

The theme is similar to that of "To learn, keep and review a mistake log," but Amabile & Kramer's post is even better.

First of all, it establishes journaling as a daily ritual, as opposed to something you do when it seems appropriate to. As such, there's a better chance that you'll do it regularly, and maintain it. In a busy work life, there's just not much opportunity to catch yourself and say, "this is important, let's note this down." A journaling habit based on answering a simple question, "What was the most interesting thing that happened today?" will catch all the really important stuff (and some less important stuff, but that's OK too).

Also, given that one's work diary isn't limited to mistakes, it avoids the risks of being too depressing or of creating the feeling that the only noteworthy things in a work life are errors. Such a negative focus would be a reason to stop keeping the journal, as well as being a distortion. In fact, Amabile & Kramer assert that one very positive outcome of journaling is a heightened appreciation for the progress (small or large) that we make every day in our jobs.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't banish mistakes from the diary. If that's the most interesting thing that happened that day, by all means journal it, and tag it as a mistake.

Then, you could periodically search for all the entries tagged "mistake" and do the same assessment I recommended for the mistake logs.

I have started doing just that.