Kerry Patterson

So we studied over 2,200 projects and programs that had been rolled out at hundreds of organizations worldwide. The findings were stunning. You can predict with nearly 90 percent accuracy which projects will fail—months or years in advance. And now back to our premise. The predictor of success or failure was whether people could hold five specific crucial conversations. For example, could they speak up if they thought the scope and schedule were unrealistic? Or did they go silent when a cross-functional team member began sloughing off? Or even more tricky—what should they do when an executive failed to provide leadership for the effort?

We’re so uncomfortable with the immediate conflict that we accept the certainty of bad results to avoid the possibility of uncomfortable conversation. We choose (at least in our minds) peace over conflict

What do I really want here?’”
Asking this question had a powerful effect on Greta’s thinking. As she focused on this far more important question, she quickly realized that her goal was to encourage these 200 managers to embrace the cost-reduction efforts—and to thereby influence thousands of others to do the same