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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Strategies for Learning from Failure
Promoting Experimentation
The third critical activity for effective learning is strategically producing failures—in the right places, at the right times—through systematic experimentation. Researchers in basic science know that although the experiments they conduct will occasionally result in a spectacular success, a large percentage of them (70% or higher in some fields) will fail. How do these people get out of bed in the morning? First, they know that failure is not optional in their work; it’s part of being at the leading edge of scientific discovery. Second, far better than most of us, they understand that every failure conveys valuable information, and they’re eager to get it before the competition does.
In contrast, managers in charge of piloting a new product or service—a classic example of experimentation in business—typically do whatever they can to make sure that the pilot is perfect right out of the starting gate. Ironically, this hunger to succeed can later inhibit the success of the official launch. Too often, managers in charge of pilots, design optimal conditions
rather than representative ones. Thus the pilot doesn’t produce knowledge about what won’t work.
Too often, pilots are conducted under optimal conditions rather than representative ones. Thus they can’t show what won’t work.
In the very early days of the Digital Subscriber Line, (DSL), a major telecommunications company did a full-scale launch of a high-speed technology to consumer households in a major urban market. It was an unmitigated customer-service disaster. The company missed 75% of its commitments and found itself confronted with a staggering 12,000 late orders. Customers were frustrated, and service reps couldn’t even begin to answer all their calls. Employee morale suffered. How could this happen to a leading company with high satisfaction ratings and a brand that had long stood for excellence?
A small and extremely successful suburban pilot had lulled Telco executives into a misguided confidence. The problem was that
the pilot did not resemble real service conditions: It was staffed with unusually personable, expert service reps and took place in a community of educated, tech- savvy customers. But DSL was a brand-new technology and, unlike traditional telephony, had to interface with customers’ highly variable home computers and technical skills. This added complexity and unpredictability to the service-delivery challenge in ways that the Telco had not fully appreciated before the launch.
A more useful pilot at the telco would have tested the technology with limited support, unsophisticated customers, and old computers. It would have been designed to discover everything that could go wrong—instead of proving that under the best of conditions everything would go right. Of course, the managers in charge would have to have understood that they were going to be rewarded not for success but, rather, for producing intelligent failures as quickly as possible.
Contributed by
Oye Jolaoso
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