Head Tale

I just finished a book called “The Big Fail: What The Pandemic Revealed About Who It Protects and Who it Leaves Behind” which is a fairly even handed look at the Covid pandemic, three years after it began, by the same journalists who wrote “Smartest Guys in the Room” about the Enron scandal.

This book has a lot of interesting insights about organizational culture, big egos, high-level decision making, interpersonal conflict, corporatization of public services and much more.

One concept that stood out to me, shown in the excerpt above, is the medical idea of a “Morbidity and Mortality” conference when something preventable goes wrong.

The idea is that everyone, at any level, involved in the situation comes together and has an honest, frank debrief without pointing fingers or assigning blame.

Obviously most workplaces aren’t dealing with direct life and death decisions.

But I do think there’s value in still having some sort of process where staff at all levels can be open and honest with each other without fear of blame, reprisal or censure.

I know personally I’ve had probably ~30 people I’ve reported to since my first job at age 15 and I can probably count on one hand how many managers/supervisors I’ve had where I’ve felt 100% trust that they had my back, that anything I said to them would be treated with respect (and held in confidence when appropriate), that they wouldn’t throw me under the bus to help their own image or career and so on.

Or how many times I’ve been in “all hands” meetings where people don’t feel safe saying what they’re really thinking so end up saying it at the water cooler to some trusted colleagues after the meeting.  (I remember being at a Branch Head meeting once where this sorta happened – I don’t remember the topic but afterwards, one of the more introverted librarians in the room came up to me and thanked me for being willing to raise a contentious point that she didn’t feel comfortable raising herself.)

Not sure what you’d call it outside of a medical setting – thinking of libraries which is the world I know best, maybe an “Open Book” conference?