My first surprise in writing this was to find
out that the root of the word surprise is "seizure." Romantically I
had always assumed that it was the combination of 'sur-' above, more, extra..
and prise. More than you expected. Most of management though seems to view
surprise with the seizure mentality. Surprises are to be avoided.
In HR the mantra is: No surprises. You should
never walk into a performance review and surprise either the employee or the
manager with “news.” Surprise is usually an indication that communication has
broken down, or else the discomfort and misaligned expectations would have been
aired before the meeting. The disorientation and dropped jaw silence brought
about by being ‘seized’ with unexpected information leaves everyone feeling
uncomfortable and grasping for an appropriate response. In these unguarded
moments, many accidents can happen.
In board meetings, quarterly calls and the slow
grind of production the mantra is: No surprises. Many a CEO has felt the sharp
sting of shares tumbling when they announced earnings outside the scope of
expectation. You can be punished for missing the target in both directions. Too
much is as bad as too little. Hence the pseudo obsessive expectation management
where analysts are left in no uncertainty as to the course and tempo of the
good ship Reliant. To deviate from projections is a considered a sign of bad
management. If your internal communications and planning process were up to
scratch, you would not have mis-projected. Pumping out the steady product of
profits requires a finely tuned harmonious symphony of expectations.
In marketing and sales the mantra is: No
surprises. Although the marketing folks love creativity, they place very strong
boundaries around how far you can go in stretching expectations and trust.
Quality is the by-product of consistency. Trust is built through years of
sameness, as the marketing executive who launched “New Coke” will no doubt tell
eternal generations of eager re-branders. In most cases marketers will apply a
coat of creativity to “delight” the consumer. Woe betide the poor agency
creative who surprises the client with real daring and a departure from the
script. Starting from a point of being startled and disoriented is never a good
place to start when asking the client to fork out hundreds of thousands of
Euros/Dollars/Pesos.
And what is the leading cause of corporate
death? Being caught by surprise. The slow kind of surprise that takes years of
denials and false confidence to gestate. It is the fast shock of surprise that
saves the frog in the boiled frog analogy. When a frog is placed in hot water
(though I don’t recommend this), it will jump out in shock as the sharp
temperature difference triggers his flight instincts. Raise the temperature
gradually and the frog will stew slowly and comfortably to his death. (I have
yet to meet someone who has actually done this, but the story is instructive).
By managing surprise out of the system
organisations often set themselves on the slow road of decline. No one wants to
be the person to bring bad news to the boss. Very few promotion opportunities
exist for mythbusters who leave management slack jawed. So how do we encourage
a corporate response that is alert and engaged with unexpected threats and
surprises? How do we encourage ways of suspending comfort to shake hands with
the charging bull of surprise?
If we view surprise as primarily a function of
information and not just emotional shock, it becomes easier to design for. The
difference between what we know and what we experience is the source of
surprise. This is where all the juicy new learning takes place. Emotionally we
are primed to have heightened senses and focus when we are met with surprise.
You never forget a decent surprise.
Surprise is the key not only to understanding
the impact of a current event but also an amazing lens through which to view
firmly held beliefs and heuristics. Surprise is the pattern breaker and because
our thoughts are so locked in established patterns we hardly ever get to see
these entrenched paths, for we are walking in them. As one of my clients once
said: “I am comfortable with what I know, it is what I don’t know that scares
the living daylights out of me. Tell me something I don’t know.”
By viewing
surprise as a source of learning we open up ourselves to a more positive
engagement with it. I have long been an advocate of “exception reporting.” By asking
your reports to highlight the top five things they didn’t expect, you encourage
a culture of learning. Weak signals at the edges become informative beacons of
trends and subtle movement that would ordinarily be buried on page 15 of a
report. At the end of workshops I also routinely ask what most surprised the
participants. Not what did you like/not like/could we do better. By focusing on
the surprise you quickly get a sense of what stood out, the unintended
consequences that created an emotional response. What moved them from the
quantity of “known” to an area of growth. Evolution has trained our minds to
pay special attention to these little flashes of friction. We anchor surprises
in our mind exactly because they contain new information. Choppy little waves
that don’t drag the resourceful ship off course but actually build better
balance and responsiveness when they are harnessed.
Are you seeing the extra gift in sur-prise? Are you encouraging a team culture that is
sensitive to the signals at the edge? Do you encourage moments of surprise as
the momentum to learn or are you slowly numbing and dulling the organisational
systems of improvisation? How might you encourage sharing and dialogue with a dropped
jaw?
