Failure: It’s what you do with it that counts
All companies, large and small, face failures from time to time. On the one hand, there are startups struggling to quickly learn what works before they run out of funding. On the other, there are global enterprises investing billions of dollars in their project portfolios in order to find the next big thing. Depending on the company culture—which is heavily influenced by the business environment, events in the company’s history, and the employees themselves—the response to failures varies.
I have met company executives who try to avoid failures at all costs, and if failures still happened, they would make sure to find the culprit. But then I have also encountered others who try to celebrate failure as a natural step in the learning process.
Naturally, the organizations working for these two types of executives turned out quite differently.
On first hearing about a failure, the first words uttered by an executive can have a remarkably big impact on an organization. Consider the following example of a project gone wrong:
Manager #1
What? Who was responsible? How in hell did you let this happen? Tell me what you’re going to do right now so this never happens again?
Effect: People in this organization avoid raising the bar. The risk of failure is not worth the effort, so they do not try their best. Eventually, the company may go under.
Manager #2:
I see. What did the team learn from this? What are they planning to do next?
Effect: People in this organization understand that if they want to learn something to take them to the next level, they will have the support to try something new. And by not giving up, even after many failures, this organization will be able to grow permanently.
Let’s be honest: no one likes to fail. After spending countless hours and sacrificing nights and weekends to keep things on track, it can be very unpleasant to not be able to achieve your goals.
Lots of failures are preventable, according to Amy Edmondson, author of ‘The Fearless Organization’ and the originator of the term Psychological Safety.
Preventable failures: Deviations from known processes that produce unwanted outcomes, commonly caused by deficiencies in behavior, skill and attention. For the above example, we failed to do proper cost management and stakeholder analysis.
Complex failures: Unique and novel combinations of events and actions that give rise to unwanted outcomes. These can be caused by complexity, variability, and novel factors imposed on familiar situations. The 2003 failed re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere by NASA’s Columbia space shuttle is one such example.
Intelligent failures: Novel forays into new territory that lead to unwanted outcomes. Causes for this could be uncertainty, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Connecting back to the two groups of executives, they should both aim to avoid “preventable” and “complex” failures, but certainly be very careful when dealing with “intelligent” failures.
When people believe that their ultimate performance is a sign of their ability or intelligence, they are less likely to take risks for fear that the results will call their ability into question.
However, if we believe that our performance reflects our efforts and ability to test different strategies, we will be motivated to try new things and persevere in the face of adversity and failure.
At the end of the day, failure is a valuable part of innovating, and while it may not always feel great, it is not something to be feared, nor is it necessarily something to be punished. Perhaps the great American industrialist Henry Ford put it best when he said: “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
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