Tell employees to make mistakes
Though he likes to take risks, Gores had to come to terms with something that makes most leaders nervous: If you’re going to think like a start-up, you’re going to make mistakes. As much as that can hurt, he has two policies when it comes to that. He encourages his nearly 50 employees at The Gores Group and the thousands working for the companies run by The Gores Group to think without fear of a mistake while also telling them not to make the same mistake twice. The result is loyal employees who push the envelope.
“We make sure people understand that taking risks is good, making a mistake is good, as long as you don’t repeat the mistake,” Gores says. “I don’t want people that say, ‘I did a perfect job, and I never made a mistake.’ That concerns me. You create an environment where, when people make a mistake, they don’t get fingers pointed at them; you help that person fix the mistake.”
With a system where people aren’t just allowed to make mistakes, but they will be supported in their effort to fix their wrongs, The Gores Group is able to nip problems quickly because employees don’t try to cover up. That, in turn, helps reciprocate the company’s risk-taking capabilities because those people see the loyalty they get if they make a mistake.
“We’re not hiding someone’s mistakes under the rug, so that makes people open about making a mistake and taking a risk,”Gores says. “This open environment with people helping each other retains people because they know we have loyalty to them. Everyone wants to grow financially, but they also wantto grow personally, so our job is to make sure we create that growth for those individuals. Taking risks, making mistakes and the way the team comes together, those are all the things that keep people here. Most people don’t want status quo, most people want change. And I’d rather they grow here and make mistakes than go some other place.”
As with his own push for new challenges, Gores doesn’t want people being silly, so there are still checks in place for big decisions. Still, in order to think like a start-up he can’t have employees with feet of clay so he gives them the ability to pull the trigger on things to keep them from becoming stagnant.
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It
’s not like just go and do something stupid, it’s being calculated about it,” Gores says. “It’s making a decision. When you’ve looked at a decision and all the facts, sometimes you just don’t make the right decision, but as long as you’re not just running with your head cut off, it’s about encouraging people to make good decisions. If they made a bad decision, but they worked hard to look at all the facts, that’s OK.
“My whole career has been built on making mistakes, but you have to learn from those so the next time you do better. What’s important about this is if you made a mistake, you can’t get stuck in it. You can’t bring yourself down; you can’t think about it all the time. You have to let it go, you made that mistake, now go make up for it somewhere else.”