The Cost of Assuming a Growth Mindset
A workshop for executives and senior leaders. Three rounds of hands-on games show whether teams across the enterprise really have the culture and environment to perform at their best and learn from failure.
Saying it is not the same as instilling it
Leaders may assume their teams operate in a culture that lets them be high performing and learn from errors and failures. They have said it. They feel safe speaking up themselves. That is often where the assumption begins.
In the Fail Fast Kites game, leaders are reminded of why these elements matter and what they look like in practice.
What the game makes visible
The board game illustrates the basic elements that enable teams throughout the enterprise to:
Psychological safety to speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes.
Respect for one another, and trust in each other and in their leaders.
Authority to act and make decisions on the work in front of them.
Work across team and division lines toward a shared outcome.
The results that follow when the elements above are in place.
Disenchanted teams do not do better because a leader or CEO made a rousing speech.
The cost of getting it wrong
Ineffective teams without a growth mindset derail projects, products, and advancement. Losses from systemic failures and toxic teams cost companies missed opportunities, delays, and millions of dollars.
Cultivating a growth mindset must be organic, but fiercely led and encouraged from above.
From insight to initiatives
Leaders work out what must be done, what should be done, what could be done, and what can’t or won’t be done, then turn those into actionable initiatives.
Each initiative goes through a pre-mortem: why it may or may not work, and why it would fail.
Three games, each one bigger
Fail Fast Kites
Surfaces the elements of high performing teams and the assumptions leaders hold about them.
Kites, scaled up
Adds the effects and influence of leadership. New elements force new layers of consideration on how leaders support or hinder team development.
Skyrockets
A similar but different game that expands the concept to overseeing multiple teams, initiatives, and growth.
The time spent is active, engaging, hands-on, and relentless. The ultimate learn by doing.
Agenda
Full day shown. Times are a guide and adjust to group size.
Leaders name the culture they believe their teams work in today.
The first round. Leaders play and fail, and see the elements of high performing teams at work.
How teams without a growth mindset derail projects, products, and advancement, and what that costs.
Leaders sort what has to change and turn it into actionable initiatives.
Each initiative is tested: why it may or may not work, and why it would fail.
The second round adds leadership effects and influence. Participants from outside the leadership team join.
The third game expands to multiple teams, initiatives, and growth across the enterprise.
Leaders discuss what the team environments revealed and commit to how they will improve them.
Who it’s for
Executives and senior leaders. The session works best when people from outside the leadership team join for the later games. They drive home the message, scale the simulation, and make team environments visible to leaders, which leads to pointed discussions on how to improve.