What is the real "f" word? It's failure. We all want
things to go perfectly - or what we perceive as perfectly.
But the truth is, they don't, always. Trying new things
creates the possibility of failure. In a business
landscape where the message is predominantly that "Failure
is Bad," it's no wonder that failure is perceived as a
dirty word.
Now seriously, every manager, business owner, executive and
employee has made mistakes and experienced what they
consider failures. As human beings, it's almost second
nature to us to follow the path of lease resistance by
beating ourselves up over every perceived failure and then
to continually remind ourselves how often, and how badly,
we've screwed up.
There is another way. What would it look like if rather
than seeing any task or action that didn't turn out as
originally planned as a "failure", we saw each of them as
learning opportunities...? What might we create? What
opportunities might arise for us? What would change if we
were able to step away from self-blame and emotional
flagellation and move forward into celebration? Years ago,
when Bill McGowan was still alive and running MCI, there
was a sign in the lobby that said, "Make Some Damn
Mistakes." The philosophy underneath that sign was that if
you didn't make mistakes you were not taking risks. Bill
truly believed that risk- taking was the greatest
opportunity for learning, and that nothing new, creative,
innovative or exciting happened without taking risks. It's
simply too bad that the culture has changed since MCI was
sold to WorldCom.
Part of the problem with the entire concept of failure is
that it allows leaders of companies to actually see things
as successes or failures, instead of as learning
experiences. Every single move a company makes, or action
that it takes, is an opportunity for learning - whether it
works or not. Even things that work out perfectly the
first time may not work the next time. Without
understanding what made the action or move work, what
conditions or environment or alignment of the stars made it
come together, there is no true success.
After all, you won't be able to duplicate the perfect
action if you don't understand what conditions allowed it
to work out perfectly in the first place. And will those
conditions be the same the next time? If something didn't
work, was it a failure? Of course not. If an action
didn't work, it simply means that something interfered with
that action working as well as planned. Any number of
things - from timing, to economy, to client needs, to the
vehicle used for distribution - any number of random
factors may have interfered with the action working as
planned. But if you automatically consider that action a
failure, you lose the important opportunity of learning how
to make it work better the next time.
When something you've planned for your company doesn't work
as well as expected, it's not necessarily comfortable, but
it's usually illuminating. When you look at everything from
the perspective of "what can we learn from this?", then you
put yourself in a place where you can make better decisions
about the future and you also encourage your people to work
from a position of innovative re-thinking. They will be
empowered to constantly improve actions and strategies.
How can you lose with that?
What if we celebrated failure instead of hiding our
"mistakes" in some allegorical closet?
History has shown over and over that not daring to fail, or
conversely refusing to admit failure and the lessons
intrinsic to it, has often created devastating consequences
of grand proportions. It's no small matter how we look at
the idea of failure and our response to it.
Let us not forget that our greatest successes, in business,
science, literature and indeed, life, have started from
failure. That's how we learn. Success isn't nearly so
powerful.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't
work." - Thomas Alva Edison
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Linda Finkle, CEO of INCEDO GROUP, works with innovative
leaders around the world who understand that business needs
a new organizational growth style. These innovative leaders
know that powerful cross-functional communication is the
highest priority and the strongest strategy for building
organizational effectiveness. To find out more, visit:
http://www.IncedoGroup.com
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