Forgiveness Rather than Permission
I have recently read several posts extolling employees who ask for forgiveness after, versus ask permission prior.
Early on in my career, likely due in large part to unchecked and unanalyzed white male privilege, I thought nothing of operating in this manner, couching my actions in getting the job done and doing what appeared best for program participants. This resulted in complete overhauls of program design, program policies, and program spaces. I created new, advantageous stakeholder partnerships and really learned to squeeze every program dollar out of every budget. I distinctly remember one management team meeting, at the point in my career I held my first Program Director title. One of my colleagues asked the senior leader why I was allowed to build out a computer lab in one of my program spaces. I thought to myself; I wasn’t allowed, I just did it. On another occasion, I took an opportunity to discuss youth violence with ranking members of the District Attorney’s Office. This one conversation eventually grew into the joint formulation of a new city-wide program, a significant, six-figure grant for my program, and an award from the US Attorney General’s Office, all with minimal updates to my immediate supervisor.
However, what has been troubling me for some time now and thus makes these posts quite serendipitous, is that this inaugural ingenuity and perhaps professionally daring behavior has been notably absent in my work over the past six years or so. While I have certainly spent significant time analyzing and checking my white male privilege over this same time period and I have served in more senior roles further from direct service work and lacking the time and space to think critically and creatively, these recent publications on this topic have featured top bosses extolling this virtue amongst their best employees. Indeed, this mode of operation can only flourish and persist within a specific work culture established by senior leaders. Here are three key ingredients that must all be added to that special work culture recipe.
1. Direct service staff and middle managers have incredible responsibilities every day. As such, senior managers who convey a sense of unequivocal trust in these employees and encourage them to make key programmatic decisions best informed by their proximity to the work likely reap the benefits of employees asking forgiveness versus permission.
2. While funder demands seem to expand, senior leaders who still unabashedly work to create a culture that sees failure as an opportunity to learn and grow reap the benefits. Fear of failure or retribution by unhappy or disappointed senior leaders ironically tend to create failure; social services programs demand flexibility and ingenuity to succeed and create impact. Without fear of failure or criticism, employees dare to be more creative, try new approaches, and yes, maybe even take some calculated risks without permission.
3. One great way to build a culture steeped in trust and the educational power of failure is to establish a very consistent, rarely rescheduled, time to check in with program leadership and teams, and to be very responsive to emails, text messages, g chat, and the like between these face-to-face times. Additionally, these regular meeting and responses need to be a dialogue versus a subordinate’s report. Regular check ins with both parties committed to formulating a timely, robust, meaningful agenda ahead of time create this dialogue, steeped in collaborative brainstorming and problem solving. The result is a work culture in which employees and team leaders are willing to think outside of the box and take calculated risks.