The Employee Handbook

A monthly newsletter about current challenges and conversations for values-driven HR professionals

If You’re Going to Fail, Fail Well

Tennis legend Billie Jean King once said, “For me, losing a tennis match isn’t failure, it’s research.”

How does your company approach failure, and how do you handle failure? At From Day One’s January virtual conference, Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, spoke about her award-winning book Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. In conversation with Adi Ignatius, editor-in-chief at the Harvard Business Review, Edmondson shared strategies on how organizations can fail well. Here’s the rundown.?

Not all failures are created equal.

You guessed it, some failures are actually bad. But a good failure, according to Edmondson, is “the undesired result of a thoughtful experiment.” To be considered good, this failure should be something new, not too big, and be in the pursuit of a clear goal. Ultimately, your goal should be not to avoid failing, but to avoid failing unproductively.?

When it comes to culture, sometimes losing can help you win.?

It’s important to chat about what you’re aiming to achieve right from the start, especially in new or tricky areas. Doing this creates psychological safety, which is a big deal especially for leaders working on company culture. “We’re sending the intellectual message that ‘We need you, we need your voice and we need you to speak up if we’re to do well on these ambitious goals,’” said Edmondson.?

Embrace the idea that some failures deserve a toast.?

Some companies (Eli Lilly for example) host parties at the end of failed clinical trials. This practice supports recognition and prevents recurring mistakes. Knowing that there’s a positive outcome on the other side also encourages failing in a timely manner. In that case, cheers!?

You can read more about our recent session on failing well here.?

The Reinvention Roadmap

Whether it’s a new haircut, experimenting with hobbies, or something larger like a career transition, many people are searching for meaningful transformation in their lives. But reinvention should be a matter of choice, not necessity. And that isn’t currently the case, especially for women in the workforce.?

“Women are especially likely to reinvent their careers, and women of color are even more likely to do so. In part, that’s because the workplace has been alarmingly slow to acknowledge the needs of working moms,” author Joanne Lipman writes in her new book Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work.

Lipman appeared in our recent webinar to discuss the reinvention trend–and, ultimately, how to support women in the workplace. She gave our audience a reinvention roadmap with four distinct steps: Search, Struggle, Stop, and Solution. Applicable at an organizational and individual level, the steps help land in a new, transformed position.

Read more about the reinvention roadmap here. Or watch the recording here.?

Join us!

Did you know that all of our events are eligible for SHRM and HRCI credit??

We have a calendar of virtual events lined up for this year. We’ll be meeting to discuss topics like offering cost-effective benefits, pursuing higher productivity, and modernizing your workplace.?

We hope you’ll join us for more thought leadership from experts in the industry, best-selling authors like Edmondson and Lipman, and of course, to earn SHRM and HRCI credits!?

Interested in Getting to the Next Stage of Diversity and Belonging? We’re hosting a half-day virtual conference on Feb. 14 about this ever-important topic. Here’s the speaker list and themes we'll be discussing. Your exclusive, complimentary VIP pass is waiting for you here.?

We’ll also be hosting live, in-person conferences from coast to coast about “Building a Culture for Workers and Companies to Thrive in Times of Change.” Here’s our 2024 calendar of live events. Check to see when we’ll be in a city near you.

See you soon!