Making decisions with limited information is fraught with the potential for rejection. When the degree of risk is high and you can’t get enough feedback to minimize it, you may put off making the decision until you have more information.

On the other hand, if the decision is of little consequence and the risk is low, you may act quickly, because in the long run, you aren’t concerned about rejection. Therefore, it’s the degree of risk in combination with the amount of feedback available that determines your behavior.

These two factors create four possible cultures as depicted in the Risk-Feedback model below. In the descriptions that follow, risk relates to decision-making and feedback relates to accessible information.

Presume Culture (High Risk — Low Feedback)

• Employees move from one crisis to the next.
• People never know how well they are doing.
• Problems require bet-your-job decision-making.
• Opportunities for making a difference are few.
• Chances of continued success are limited.
• Mistakes are not tolerated, and the cost of failure is high.
• The norm is to avoid mistakes and making certain before you act.
• New ideas are modest improvements on what worked before.

Process Culture (Low Risk — Low Feedback)

• Resistance to change is very strong.
• Failure is viewed as a career ending point.
• Once an idea fails there is no interest in trying it again.  
• New employees are warned not to upset the status quo.
• Customer Service is slow and unresponsive.
• Complaints are expected as part of the job.
• Ideas and suggestions are overly examined from every angle.
• The behavioral norm is, “don’t rock the boat.”

Progress Culture (Low Risk — High Feedback)

• Plans and creative concepts are developed for the future.
• Employees strive for success and take chances.
• There is ample time to develop and test new ideas.
• Failure creates opportunities for testing alternatives.
• Information is available through easily assessable sources.
• People are fluid, moving often, changing positions and job duties.
• New projects are launched as soon as the pilot shows promise.
• The more you put into the job, the more you get out of it

Perform Culture (High Risk — High Feedback)

• Sufficient information to fully understand the risk is available.
• Risk stimulates creative thinking and builds confidence.
• The best decisions are made when the competition hesitates.
• People know how to network with unique and varying sources.  
• Change is the natural way to sustain high performance.
• Innovation means new ways to use old resources.
• Failure is expected and closely examined when it occurs.
• New learning opportunities and creative processes are the norm.

The Meaning of Failure

Functionality is determined by the way people react to failure. In a dysfunctional culture failure is not tolerated and the fear of rejection is constant. In a functional culture failure is the price to be paid for success and rejection is viewed as an opportunity to learn.

Your attitude toward rejection depends upon how you view failure. Confronting failure allows you to learn from it and respond to it so it doesn’t cloud your future. It also helps you develop relationships in a positive way, even when your surrounding culture is dysfunctional.

Of the four cultures described previously, the presume culture is the most prone to dysfunction. This is a tense culture, fast-paced and crisis-driven. People tend to be self-centered, closeminded, and mean-spirited. Succeeding in this culture is difficult and challenging since both the risks and the chances of failure are high.

There are examples in the news daily of what can happen to an organization that gets stuck in a presume culture whereby the decision makers increased their risk without upgrading the feedback process. Eventually, the lack of information did them in.

The process culture is also dysfunctional because the people in it are nonreactive. This is a slack culture, slow moving, and crisis resistant. The participants are well-intentioned, but tend to be self-satisfied and close-minded. They don’t respond in a timely manner and therefore discourage creative solutions to pressing problems. Getting people to change the way they do things, even when such change is clearly advantageous and justifiable, takes a major effort.

In both the process and presume cultures, people will change but only when it is forced upon them. External demands put pressure on them to make decisions sooner than they would like. Thus, they risk being wrong more often, which in turn, increases their opportunity for failure and subsequently the rejection that is bound to follow.

Given these circumstances, those who are already failing to meet minimum expectations feel threatened by change, as they fear it will demand more of them. Rather than looking forward, they start wishing for the good old days and talking about how great things used to be.

Reviewing the degree of risk and amount of feedback periodically can help you gain new insights while forging a sense of value and purpose. You should then be able to clarify the steps needed to ensure a successful future even if the culture remains dysfunctional.