8. Surprise

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?