Psychological safety

A quick word on leading a team? Let me actually share two - "psychological safety".

"Psychological safety is the individual perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk". According to a (very cool) research from Google , that's actually the main factor that determines a team's effectiveness.

And it makes sense. In harsh words, "psychological safety" means an individual believes it's safe to take risks within their team and speak up without being labeled as incompetent, negative or disruptive.

On teams with high psychological safety, there is a higher diversity of opinions, opener and richer discussions, conversations that are both more natural and assertive - leading to better solutions. It's your responsibility as a team leader to foster it.

Does forecasting work?

How do you predict the future? One way is to forecast - to go through a forecasting exercise, based on your and the market's current situation. This typically works very well for the short foreseeable future.

But what if you need to look beyond that? If you need to make a strategic decision, a capex investment, that will take years to bear fruit - how can you predict the future in a way that it can minimize your risk?

I once came upon an opinion from Mike Rosenberg that said that forecasting doesn't work for anything that matters (yes, I believe he was being a bit dramatic!) and that for strategic decisions you should rely on scenario planning, imagining the world as it could look like and then to work backwards to see what your strategy should be. And that should be way you look at a company's sustainability strategy.