The idea that failure is the best teacher and that we all should be learning from failure has become commonplace in business to the point of cliché. But while most of us buy into this, we often give it little more than lip service. As Amy Edmondson, professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, has written, “The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet organisations that do it well are extraordinarily rare.” So, why is this — and how do you really learn from failure?
Change your organisational culture around failure
One problem with failure is that many organisations are (whatever they say) quite blame-centric. In wanting to identify the causes of failure, they end up pointing the finger. When you have such a culture, people will often sweep failures under the rug. At one end of the scale, this simply means that valuable lessons go unlearned. But at the other end, it can mean that small failures accumulate and eventually lead to catastrophic failure.
So, if you are a senior manager, strive to create a positive culture where people can acknowledge that things can and do go wrong, knowing they will not be punished. Industries such as aviation, mining, and power are very good at this for obvious reasons.
Challenge the way you think about failure
Many people — as well as organisations — believe that failure is simply “bad” and seek to avoid it at all costs. If they fail, they try to minimise or hide it, blame it on external factors, or shy away from the area in which the failure occurred. But these are negative responses — they can leave you feeling uncomfortable, defensive, and anxious, and in the long term, seriously impact your career. Learning from failure means growth — dealing with it and coming back stronger.
Learn to differentiate between failures
Companies (and individuals) often apply the same template to all failures. This is usually something like: Find out what went wrong, learn something, and ensure it never happens again. But the best starting point needs to be that not all failures are the same.
Certain failures are straightforward. If you are engaged in a routine, well-known task and make an error, that’s usually a bad thing (although if it happens regularly, it could point to a flawed process that needs improving). Other failures are more complex. You might be part of a larger, strategic plan. The plan failed because the strategy was wrong. But you and your team didn’t fail. Conversely, if you are innovating, trying to do something in a new way, you should expect to fail and see failure as a valuable part of the process. Failure literally provides you the data you need to succeed.
All this applies to you and your career, too. If you never fail, chances are you’re always in your comfort zone, not taking risks and stretching yourself, and are less likely to progress. A bit of failure builds resilience and humility, too.
Conduct failure analysis: What happened and why
Taking a positive approach to failure does not mean simply holding up your hands and moving on. Failure analysis is essential. Was it an error on your part? Was it a flawed process? A lack of support? Was it a combination of these things? What could have been done to prevent the failure? How can we mitigate the fallout from future failures? On a corporate level, it is also worth looking at the failure in context — is it a one-off or part of a pattern? Are there other, similar failures? The trick is not to prevent failure, but to fail intelligently.
Ask around
Encourage employees to give their views on why things went wrong and what they would do differently to prevent future failures. This is good practice (surprising insights often come from unexpected places), and it encourages a culture of openness around failure. Have there been similar failures in your industry or related industries? For serious failures, it may be worth seeking advice from external experts. It’s about gathering as much information as you can.
There’s not always a lesson to be learned
No matter how deep you dive into the reasons behind them, some failures are unforeseeable, random, or just plain bad luck. You did everything right, and it all went wrong anyway. If, after you’ve analysed the failure, you realise this is the case, don’t waste any more time. Chalk it up to experience and move on. Make sure anyone involved understands that it wasn’t their fault (this is particularly important if you were a small, perhaps successful, part of a larger project that failed). Sometimes the lesson is that there is no lesson.
Beware of over-celebrating failure, however. One particularly tedious aspect of modern working life is the tendency for successful people to add a couple of notable failures to their own stories, almost always as stepping stones to success. There is usually not much to learn here. People often just want to use these examples to appear to have an exciting, gripping backstory.
Don’t let the failure go to waste
Along with learning and insights, failures also offer a chance to make things right. You will never find a greater appetite for positive change than after a significant failure. So, seize the day and make the changes. Explain to your people what the changes are, why you’re making them, and the improvements they’ll deliver — really bring your people along. Smart managers and organisations will often use a big failure as a mandate for long-needed changes.
Rhymer Rigby is a business writer and columnist. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
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