He who dares wins. Until he fails

When I was a master's student, one of the lecturers told us about a company management that asked its employees to propose new ideas 'outside the box.' One employee took up the challenge and proposed a bold idea. It was not absurd or irresponsible, but definitely not what the company had done until then. The management was enthusiastic: it examined the idea, approved it, and allocated a budget and resources. Then the idea failed. In response, the management decided to promote the employee. They wanted to make it clear that whoever proposes ideas will not be punished for daring to think. The management had checked the idea, adopted it, and turned it into an organizational plan.

Last week, it was reported that the head of the Mossad, Roman Gofman, decided to remove from their positions two senior officials identified with the Israeli plan to create conditions for the overthrow of the regime in Iran. According to reports, these were two central figures involved in planning the move. The plan did not achieve its goal and was not fully implemented, and the decision to remove them was reportedly linked to this failure.

It is important to qualify: we do not know the full considerations behind the decision, only what has been published. According to some reports, the termination was by agreement, both remain in the organization, and a strained relationship with the head of the organization may have been in the background. But the way such a move is perceived, inside and outside the organization, is the heart of the matter. If the reports are correct, this is a dangerous organizational mistake.

People like to simplify a complex reality: someone proposed an idea, it failed, therefore he is responsible. But organizations do not work that way. From the moment management examines everything and turns the idea into policy, it is the organization's idea. That is what management exists for. If all responsibility remains with the person who proposed the idea, one can save a lot of management salaries.

We learn from what happens to others. Albert Bandura showed that people learn not only from stated messages. An organization can hang a huge sign in the corridors that says 'Think different,' hold workshops on creativity, and encourage thinking outside the box. But the moment you see an employee who dares and pays for a failure personally, the message heard is: it is not worth taking risks. But as they say in elite units, only he who dares wins. As long as the risk is calculated, of course.

One of the important conditions for a learning organization is what Harvard management researcher Amy Edmondson called 'psychological safety': a shared belief that the team is a safe place for interpersonal risk-taking. The feeling that one can throw out ideas, ask questions, disagree, and admit a mistake without every deviation from the consensus becoming a personal risk. Psychological safety is not a license to fail. What the organization should encourage is the thinking itself, not the drama. But it requires a distinction between negligence and error, between unprofessionalism and erroneous assessments, and between an irresponsible decision and a calculated risk that simply did not succeed. An organization that does not know how to make this distinction does not get fewer mistakes; it gets fewer people willing to make mistakes.

The Mossad is one of the organizations where the ability to think differently is a strategic asset. Now think about the next Mossad agent with such an idea. He knows that if the idea succeeds, the entire organization will get the credit. But he also knows that if it fails, it might turn into a 'One man show': he is the thinker, he is the executor, and he alone is responsible. This is not an incentive system that encourages spies. This is a production line for 'small heads.' After October 7, it is hard to think of a more dangerous message for an intelligence organization.

The plan to overthrow the Iranian regime was not written on a napkin by two employees in the dead of night. It was presented to the Prime Minister, discussed with the US administration, and the Americans were even involved in parts of the move. A good manager is supposed to identify bad ideas. If they do not, they cannot retrospectively turn the result into an indictment against those who conceived them.

We tend to judge decisions based on the result—this is called 'outcome bias.' But a good decision can fail, and a bad decision can succeed. Criticism cannot be based only on whether the goal was achieved. It must ask: were the assessments professional? Were the risks presented honestly? Were alternatives considered? Did the decision-makers understand the uncertainty? If the answers are negative, conclusions should be drawn from the entire decision-making chain, not just from the links that are convenient to remove.

Perhaps the two senior officials who were removed did indeed fail professionally. But the way an organization handles failure is a message sent to the future. An organization that punishes people for ideas that failed does not teach them to propose better ideas, but safer ones. This is a decent recipe for keeping a job, but less successful if the goal is to achieve security.

The author is an expert in behavioral economics and decision-making, a faculty member at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at Reichman University.