For a child, FAIL is nothing more than the “First Attempt In Learning.” As her father, it’s my responsibility to help her grow comfortable with failing so she can be the best version of herself.

Likewise, in business, one of the biggest mistakes I see talented people make in their careers is being afraid to fail. The prospect of failing is so intimidating, they pursue goals they are guaranteed to achieve rather than aim for more ambitious outcomes they could miss. They are so motivated to avoid error, they shortchange themselves and their colleagues, sacrificing creativity and ingenuity for the safety of the status quo.

To make any decision is to take a risk. Some percentage of our decisions will fail. According to JP Morgan’s Chief Marketing Officer, , “If you’re not failing, then you’re not learning.”

One of the best ways people can get comfortable making fast decisions is to focus on “two-way door” decisions making, rather than “one-way door” decision making. Jeff Wilke, Senior Vice President of Consumer Business at Amazon, does a great job the critical difference between these two: “A one-way door is a place with a decision if you walk through, and if you don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back. You can’t get back to the initial state. A two-way door, you can walk through and can see what you find, and if you don’t like it, you can walk right back through the door and return to the state you had before.”

Two-way door decisions are reversible and therefore require less vetting. As Wilkes says, “Why would we need anything more than the lightest weight approval process for those two-way doors?” What applies for Amazon as an organization applies to people as well. Why worry too much if you can walk it back?

As a CEO, I encourage my employees to make two-way door decisions. This may take the form of releasing a software enhancement that can be rolled back, or piloting a program within a single department before implementing company-wide.

One-way door decisions require more thought and buy-in since they cannot be undone. Both decision types have the potential to yield great results, but one-way decisions risk greater repercussions if they are wrong and take greater care and vetting.

If fear of failure is hindering your organization’s ability to innovate or your personal ability to take risk in your life, consider using the concept of two-way door decision making. It is a safe, simple, smart way to open up your employees or yourself to the risk of failure, and, more importantlyĀ – the risk of success.

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One of his observations that jumped out was “knowledge is not enough to change behavior.” Ā If it were, NOBODY would smoke, eat dessert, or do drugs. Ā Pretty obvious, but quite profound if you think about it.

You need to modify behaviors to achieve different results.

In business, this concept should be incorporated into training and team development methodologies. Ā A leader or trainer cannot simply ā€œtellā€ the team what needs to be done. Ā The most effective team-building comes from helping people modify behaviorsĀ to improve success and performance. Ā As individual employees, we also need to be aware of this, and mentally force ourselves to not just know the right thing to do, butĀ modify ourĀ behavior to bestĀ practices. Only through reinforcement will behaviors become ingrained, and a part of an organizationā€™s individual and team DNA.

While this concept can apply to any job, it is equally applicable to any individual life choice.

For instance, in my own personal life, I have the knowledge that I shouldĀ lose weight and that to do so, I need to ingest less calories. Ā Sometimes, I eat and drinkĀ less. Ā Other times (usually around the holidays or vacation), I let it go and lose much of the gains I made. Ā I need to consciously modify my behaviors to sustain and achieve my goals. Ā The hole I created is self-inflicted, and getting out of the situation is way harder than maintaining it once I have achieved a good state. Still, the change in behavior is on me.

Knowledge is not enough. Developing systems that help us hold ourselves and others accountable for modifying behaviors is the key to achieving both personal and organizational success.

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ā€œProfessor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It’s how we get our satisfaction. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find — the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about ‘addiction’ altogether, and instead call it ‘bonding.’ A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn’t bond as fully with anything else.

So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.?ā€

They reference the famous drug experiment where a rat living in isolation will consistently choose water laced with cocaine or heroin over clean water until it kills them. But when this same experiment is conducted in a virtual ā€œrat heavenā€ (e.g. great food, tunnels, and multiple rats living together), the rats will mostly choose the pure water. None of these rats died.

Addiction is something our industry combats daily and itā€™s something that, like many of you, I have experienced with people close to me. These were people I loved and respected, but they shared a common pattern of drug use that arose during personal crises. Divorce, financial issues, or disconnection from family were always present at these troublesome times.

An illness or injury can be an isolating event, and can certainly trigger stress in a personā€™s life. They may have worries about health, finances, productivityā€”the list can be long and varied. It is vital to provide a patient not just with treatment, but also with the support system, empathy, and connection to help them manage pain and recovery responsibly.

For these reasons, 911³Ō¹Ļ takes a holistic view of a patientā€™s health so that our interactions account for the physical/chemical, psychological, and social aspects of treatment and healing. For instance, with our early intervention program, we identify a patientā€™s psychological/social risk factors and we also employ a ā€œmedical conciergeā€ approach that provides support and advocacy, assures appropriate treatment, and monitors risk throughout the continuum of care. What this article reinforces to me is that the social warning signs will often be more powerful than the physical. If a patient is unhappy at work or at home, it is a potent indicator that any addictive substance might pose a risk, particularly if used as a substitute for human bonding.

Humans are social animals. Relationships are criticalā€”in work, in life, and yesā€”in recovery from injury/illness. We need to look beyond the physical and psycho-social red flags of addiction, and think of preventing addiction in terms of caring, compassion, and connectedness in our claims and medical management efforts.

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ā€œThe study, which looked at 431 colon cancer surgery patients, found that the 13% of patients who had quality-of-life scores below 50 on a 100-point scale were almost 3 times as likely to have serious post-surgery complications as those with scores of 50 or above. In turn, those with complications were hospitalized an average of 3.5 days longer than the others.ā€

Given that each day in a hospital ICU will cost thousands of dollars, the financial impact is dramatic.

Many in the industry include social risk factor scoring in claims risk assessment, but it would be compelling if quality of life score data was incorporated as well.  The quote, “we can now measure quality of life like blood pressure” jumped off the page for me.

So in the context of our industry, this is great information and a great opportunity, but it is just as important to apply this to life. Attitude impacts everything in life, including health.  Work on improving your own happiness and quality of life score.  There is no limit on happiness.

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Then they asked the least favorite time in childhood.  The number one worst memory was the ride home after a sporting eventā€”a parent telling them what they could do better, or what they missed.  The parent was trying to help, but the child could sense the disappointment in every word.

One of my executive coaches found that the most disheartening thing I did to co-workers was when they showed me something new, I immediately went to feedback and ideas for improvement.  Just like a parent after a game, trying to help, it was perceived as judgment.  That is one reason that employee acknowledgement programs are so important to me,  to 911³Ō¹Ļā€™s  culture, and to corporate cultures in general ā€”so we donā€™t forget to celebrate employeesā€™ accomplishments and improvements in the moment.

It is interesting that as adults, two of the factors that most determine job satisfaction are Mastery (or Perceived Progress) and Autonomy (or Perceived Control).
 
Our motivations, and what drives us, do not change much over time.

An acronym referenced in the lecture as a tool to control the urge to over-parent, over-manage, etc., was WAIT, or ā€œWhy Am I Talking?ā€  Let the child talk, and work through ideas and issues on their own, and only provide feedback when asked.   It is a simple and profound takeaway for those of us with children, and at times, in business and life.

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2) Babies show a bias towards puppets that are similar to them.  For example, if a baby likes Cheerios and dislikes graham crackers, the baby will gravitate towards the puppet that likes Cheerios vs. the puppet that likes graham crackers.  The bias towards self and the need to categorize belonging is strong in humans from birth.

3) In one of the scarier studies, if a puppet is mean to another puppet that the baby has decided he dislikes (i.e. the puppet eats graham crackers). The baby is attracted to the puppet that is mean rather than the disliked puppet. This is because the disliked puppet is “them,” so the mean puppet must be “us.”  Bias and a need to categorize us vs. them is an innate human emotion.

4) Almost all children up to a certain age choose less for themselves if it means they get more relative to their friend.  For example, you can have five candy bars and your friend can have one or you can each have 10 candy bars. The children almost always opted for the five candy bars because, relatively, they had more than their friend.  Relativity and comparison to others is a powerful innate motivator.  This does not fully go away. I mentioned this behavior in the  about adults behaving the same way.

5) Over a certain age, children start making the “right” choice more often, as they are socialized  about right and wrong.  The way they described it was that primal desires still can lead to bad behavior, but we can learn to moderate them.

and think about what you see in life. Are we born with this universal moral code, knowing right from wrong? Is there a dark side of morality? Or is dividing people up by us verses them natural?

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