Page 4 - Inside Access March 1st Edition

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Strategies for
Learning from
The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet organisations that do it well are extraordinarily rare. This gap is not due to a lack of commitment to learning, but having leaders that think about failure the wrong way.
Most executives believe that failure is bad (of course!). They also believe that learning from it is pretty straightforward. These widely held beliefs are misguided. First, failure is not always bad. In organisational life it is sometimes bad, sometimes inevitable, and sometimes even good. Second, learning from organisational failures is anything but straightforward. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyse failures are in short supply in most companies, and the need for context-specific learning strategies is underappreciated. Organizations need new and better ways to go beyond lessons that are superficial (procedures were not followed) or self-serving, (the market just wasn’t ready for our great product). That means discarding old cultural beliefs and stereotypical notions of success and embracing failure’s lessons.
The Blame Game
Failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most households, organizations, and cultures. Every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. That is why so few organizations have shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realized.
A culture that makes it safe to admit and report on failure can—and in some organizational contexts must—coexist with high standards for performance. To understand why, look at the exhibit “A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure,” which lists causes ranging from deliberate deviation to thoughtful experimentation. Which of these causes involve blameworthy actions? Deliberate deviance, obviously warrants blame but inattention might not. If it results from a lack of effort, perhaps it’s blameworthy. But if it results from fatigue near the end of an overly long shift, the manager who assigned the shift is more at fault than the employee.
When executives were asked to consider this spectrum and then estimate how many of the failures in their organizations are truly blameworthy, their answers are usually in single digits—perhaps 2% to 5%. But when asked how
Carly Fiorina
many are treated as blameworthy, they say (after a pause or a laugh) 70% to 90%. The unfortunate consequence is that many failures go unreported and their lessons are lost.
Contributed by Oye Jolaoso
PAGE 4 INSIDE ACCESS | MARCH 2021 1ST EDITION