Uncertainty can be scary. Making decisions may feel like you’re jumping with no return. This might prevent you or your peers from taking risks. However, most decisions are not a plunge to a certain death, but instead taking a most likely fixable choice. Whatever the outcome, what’s for sure is that a lesson will come from it. 

Mimecast CMO Norman Guadagno compares it to his two-year-old bumping into things, standing up, and not letting it stop him. His body learns from the fall. In his conversation with Ben Kaplan for TOP CMO, Norman gives his view on how to push his employees to learn and build trust in themselves and others.

Safety plugs and corner protectors

“There are businesses that treat their website as if it were a printed book. And it requires a massive force before you can go and like have a new edition published, right? And I'm like, it's digital, test it, make a change, do it.”

No one wants to cause a catastrophe just for the sake of trying, especially if accountability is easy to trace back to them. Norman doesn’t just leave any decision up to trial and error, but he does believe in creating safe environments where his employees can test alternatives, knowing he has their back.

Once all the outlets are blocked and major dangers are out of the question, you can give free rein for experimentation so people can hit snags, go down unproductive paths, and make mistakes. While it may seem like a messy method, it allows everyone to learn from their errors and, in the process, find unexpected opportunities that stem from them. With the appropriate protection, that’s how toddlers learn to do absolutely everything after all.

Booboos

“Somebody will give you a band-aid and give you a sticker. And you'll walk away with your SpiderMan sticker and you'll feel good.”

Of course, part of taking risks is assuming the very real, negative consequences. It’s not all fun, games, learning, and finding brilliant alternatives. Often, tests will result in less-than-optimal outcomes, such as a decrease in impressions and interactions on a webpage after a change in its messaging or interface. It can get frustrating.

The beauty of being open to test, though, is that you can do it all over again with the replacement for what probably caused the issue. It’s all about finding the balance, but you cannot find it without endless iteration. And those mistakes can shed light on something thought to be unimportant that actually changes the whole equation, or vice-versa. The booboo might hurt, but you can alleviate the pain and be ready to jump into a new adventure.

Building blocks

“I'm doing this because I want to understand how you do your job and I want to go through this a couple of times and then you got this, I trust you, you're gonna go forward.”

Trust works, to Norman Guadagno, both ways. On the one hand, employees have to earn a leader’s trust by learning the right way of doing it, saying you’re doing it, doing it, and repeating. By committing and following through, employers can trust their workers to work independently. On the other hand, bosses earn their workforce’s trust by keeping their promises repeatedly. If, say, a CMO offers a space for trial and error with their full backing, the employee makes a mistake and everything’s okay, then the employee will know they can trust their leader.

A key to this building process is being transparent and explicit. A leader making it clear they want their employees to get to a point of working without needing to check with them. An employee being transparent about what they’re working on, instead of doing it secretly, possibly giving their leader a surprise they may not enjoy. Just like a parent and a kid proving their reliability to each other, it’s all about communication, consistency, and transparency.

Thinking K-12

Everything takes time. Trials and errors. Finding worthy solutions. Sailing through hardships. Building trust. As a leader, it’s important to be clear about what you expect. If the times allow for it, let your employees play, experiment, make mistakes. Reassure them that you have their backs and guide them through hardships so that, one day, they will work like a well oiled machine. Kids learn from their booboos and keep trying because they know their parents are there to catch them. Be the safety net.

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