Balance accountability and psychological safety

Always balance clear accountability with the psychological safety needed for honest reporting and learning. For example, a product team can establish this balance by separating their "performance metrics" from their "learning metrics." While they hold themselves accountable for delivering core features on schedule, they create a safer space around metrics tracking experimental features, where failure provides valuable insights rather than indicating poor performance.

Creating psychological safety doesn't mean abandoning accountability. It means creating the right conditions for truthful assessment and productive improvement. This can be done by starting metric discussions with what can be learned rather than who is to blame. When a feature launch doesn't meet adoption targets, retrospectives should focus first on understanding user behavior and identifying improvement opportunities before discussing team execution.

Members should feel comfortable enough to share challenges early rather than hiding problems until they become crises. Product leaders can model this behavior by setting realistic goals, openly discussing their own metric challenges, and explicitly praising team members who surface potential issues before they impact results.