Hacking HR to Build an Adaptability Advantage

The gist: New employees and their organizations each want employees to connect with existing organizational culture. Why not integrate experimentation and learning (a critical element of the adaptable organization's culture), into the onboarding process?

The rationale: Employees are most vulnerable to becoming enemies of adaptability during the onboarding process, a time when they are blank slates seeking to understand both an organization's informal culture and formal expectations. Fear of failure can impact both paths of understanding. At the organizational level, fear of failure is strongly embedded in an organization's culture, to which new employees will be particularly sensitive. At the individual level, formal interactions with an agent of the organization (such as a manager or trainer) may convey expectations that seem to support fear of failure. That being said, the onboarding  process has the potential to be a crucial opportunity, rather than a risk.

Given that new employees have an inherent desire to connect with an organization's culture, what better time to introduce an incoming workforce to the idea that failure can be learned from and experimentation is valuable than onboarding? Thereby training a culture of fearlessness into an organizations incoming workforce and creating habits that support adaptability rather than hinder it.

Barriers to adaptability being overcome: Fear of Failure, Habit