Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock

I just finished reading an excellent book titled Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock, the head of People Operations at Google. In his book, Mr. Bock mentions an article written by Chris Argyris, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School. Professor Argyris looked the performance of Harvard Business School graduates ten years after graduation. For the most part, these people got stuck in middle management when they had all hoped to become CEOs and captains of industry. What he found is that when these people inevitably hit a roadblock, their ability to learn collapsed. In Professor Agryris’ own words, “Put simply, because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure….[T]hey become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the “blame” on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most.” The key to avoiding this predicament is to realize early on that failure is an inevitable part of success, accept is when it occurs and then ask the question, “What did I learn from this?”

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