In these pages, I've suggested we can find ourselves a more confident, inspiring, and hopeful vantage point. Many people assume that it's somewhere up in the clouds, and are surprised to learn that in fact it's on solid ground.
A growing body of research in management and in the social and behavioral sciences provides strong support for learning from success instead of only seeking to correct deficiencies. That might be tough to buy, so let's work with it for a moment.
Sports psychology gives some especially vivid illustrations. In one typical experiment, people learning to bowl were divided into two groups: One group was only shown videotapes of their successes. The other half was shown only their mistakes.
The first group, the ones who focused on what they did well, improved twice as much as the second group.
In all kinds of athletics, such methods are becoming a vital part of training. Jack Nicklaus, widely considered the greatest golfer of all time, tells us how important it is to hold a mental picture of success. A successful shot is much more likely when a golfer is told to "hit the ball down the middle of the fairway," rather than "don't hit the ball into the trees."
What's going on here? Why in the world would it matter how we phrase what seems on the surface to be the exactly same goal?
Only the picture of what we want--the picture of success--gives us an image that we can hold in our minds and use to guide our actions. It's easy to envision a golf ball soaring in a high arc straight down the middle of the fairway.
But what does "don't hit the ball into the trees" look like? The only clear picture associated with the phrase has an unintended effect: Research has shown that the mind tends to ignore the "not." We're left with only the image of hit the ball into the trees, the opposite of what we want to happen.
Still, our social conventions, those habitual patterns of thought and language that we construct in our everyday conversations, draw us toward a continuing cascade of correcting mistakes. So I yell to the kids at the pool "Don't run!" even though I know full well that "Walk!" would be a better choice. The words pop out of my mouth before I think.
The same patterns play out in organizations, also without thought. We seek to identify problems, fix mistakes, learn from failure--and we institutionalize those habits in structures and practices that become unquestioned routines. I try not to forget (I mean, I try to remember) how ingrained it is to see the world this way. It goes all the way back to childhood, when we were mostly told what not to do.
And these common practices work, or at least they work well enough for most of us, most of the time. Remember that the bowlers who saw only their mistakes did improve. But those who saw their successes improved much more.
If our goal is to continue to advance incrementally, in small steps, then the traditional deficit approach may be equal to the task. After all, we've had lots of practice, we've become very good at it, and it has served us well enough.
On the other hand, if we want to dramatically advance our organizations and the causes we care about, we might find ourselves asking: What's the best way to inspire, mobilize, and sustain the desire that people have built in?