Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Experiments aren't for covering yourself
Performative experiments
Peter Rahal wants the company focused on the experiment itself, without worrying about covering anyone. Humility is foundational to the culture, defined as freedom from pride and arrogance, and it shows up as admitting you do not know what you are doing and need help. A cover-your-ass culture, where data is gathered so the decision looks good, is not productive.
Values at risk
Entrepreneurship is another core value, and any performative activity and fear of failure is its opposite. A company cannot keep that as it scales, and plenty of people arrive from corporate environments wanting to protect their job.
Baptizing new hires
New hires from other food companies bring a lot of good experience. They go through onboarding that teaches them the company's beliefs and values, entrepreneurship and humility included, and even has them pack boxes. He calls it baptizing them.
Why do people gather data to justify decisions?
Psychologist Philip Tetlock's research on accountability found that people who expect to defend a decision to an audience with unknown views tend to think it through more carefully. People who already know what the audience wants tend to shift toward that view. His studies of accountability date from the 1980s.
How does admitting mistakes help teams?
In a 1996 study of hospital units, Harvard professor Amy Edmondson found that the better-led units reported more medication errors, not fewer. Members felt safe enough to speak up about them. She later named that shared belief psychological safety in a 1999 paper in Administrative Science Quarterly.
More from David Senra
