Failure and Learning

If success is a catalyst for failure because it leads to the "undisciplined pursuit of more," then one simple antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less. Not just haphazardly saying no, but purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the nonessentials. Not just once a year as part of a planning meeting, but constantly reducing, focusing and simplifying. Not just getting rid of the obvious time wasters, but being willing to cut out really terrific opportunities as well. Few appear to have the courage to live this principle, which may be why it differentiates successful people and organizations from the very successful ones.

We all make mistakes. Every one of us. If we aren’t making mistakes, then we likely aren’t trying enough new things outside our comfort zone, and that itself is a mistake. That process is the best way to learn and grow as a person.  As John Wooden once said, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.” Mistakes are the pathway to great ideas and innovation. Mistakes are the stepping stones to moving outside the comfort zone to the growing zone where new discoveries are made and great lessons are learned. Mistakes are not failures, they are simply the process of eliminating ways that won’t work in order to come closer to the ways that will.

Great leaders allow their people the freedom to make mistakes. But good employees are those who when mistakes are made 1. Learn from them, 2. Own them, 3. Fix them, and 4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again.

Some failure humor from Deborah Elizabeth Finn. 

https://twitter.com/deborah909/status/323579224197832704

"Making a mistake is not a fault of character, not being able to forgive others for their mistakes is a big one!"

Rachel Jansen, Writer, and Ashley Good, CEO and Founder of Fail Forward, a project of Engineers Without Borders Canada, talk about how to move past the fear of failing.

Some good practical tips about failing informatively. Inspiring

This is from a survey http://www.15inno.com/2012/11/22/failurelearnmore/ for a book about learning from failure.

The Top Ten Reasons for Failure

1) unrealistic expectations from top management regarding resources and the time really required in achieving innovation

2) the lack of resources allocated in budget, people, infrastructure

3) far too much focus on products and technology and ignoring the other options within innovation, such as service, business model, platform collaborations etc.

4) that people or teams operate in silo’s instead of broader collaborative approaches

5) the wrong personnel are in place to make innovation happen

6) that classic of classics, a poorly defined innovation strategy and the goals to achieve this.

7) a lack of innovation strategy

8) the emphasis is placed in far too much on idea generation and not on execution,

9) a lack of involving external partners and lastly

10) poor management of the innovation process.

One way to avoid failure is really understanding what to say yes and what to say no to ...

Here's another process to look at failure - it is called "Church of Failure" where they gather a group of people who share and celebrate failure.

it’s a common theme in business writing: “if you want to succeed double your failure-rate”. That’s my favourite, from Thomas J Watson, Sr., long-serving president of IBM. But everyone from Abe Lincoln to Colonel Sanders apparently loved to fail, and learn from their failures.

Useful article from LIfeHack via Christine Johns

Curated list of dealing with failure blog post from nonprofit folks.

This is an interesting idea - a page on your web site sharing your "mistakes" how many folks would do this?

So you have to create a culture where [failure] is OK. You have to protect people who fail for the right reasons. If you fail because of some external event that you couldn't control, if your logic was right, if your execution was good and you fail for some reason that couldn't have been foreseen, I think that could be a reasonable reason for failure.

Some practical steps for embracing failure that get it taking the stigma away from ourselves.  

The normal reaction to "failure" is to stop completely.