Page 170 - The Power to Change Anything

Harness Peer Pressure 159

Let’s not lose the point here. The problem in this particu-
lar hospital was not merely that a doctor or nurse broke rules.
The problem was that there was a conspiracy of silence held
in place by powerful norms that kept people from speaking
when colleagues violated hygiene, safety, or any other proto-
col. The existing social norm called for silence. If someone
screws up, you must circle the wagons against lawsuits and
infamy. Never speak to outsiders about the real cause. And now
for the bigger point: It is silence about the norm of silence
that sustains the norm. If you can’t talk about it, it will never
go away.
If you’re reading these examples but not wearing hospital
greens, then you’re not off the hook. We’ve also poked around
in every type of organization imaginable and have found this
same code of silence that sustains unhealthy behavior. For
instance, we conducted a year-long study of project manage-
ment titled “Silence Fails.”* In it we explored the colossal fail-
ure rates of most high-stakes projects, programs, and initiatives.
For example, the vast majority of product launches, reorganiza-
tions, mergers, and improvement initiatives either fail or grossly
disappoint. In all, roughly 90 percent of major projects violate
their own schedule, budget, or quality standards.
So we went in search of the cause behind these embarrass-
ing results. At first we learned that 88 percent of those we sur-
veyed were currently working on projects or initiatives which
they predicted would eventually fail—and yet they continued
to plod along. Most agreed that the expression that best
described the state of their current project was “a slow-motion
train wreck.”
Then we learned the reason behind the reason: Fewer than
one in ten respondents said that it was politically acceptable to
speak openly about what was going wrong. Most suggested that
problems such as weak sponsorship, unreasonable constraints,

*For a full report, visit www.silencefails.com.