Innovation is created by trying to fail - embrace failure

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work” Thomas Edison

People of immense accomplishment has also failed at times along their way and sometimes repeatedly, and even spectacularly. The list is endless. Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs., J. K. Rowling, Albert Einstein just to mention a few people, all failed in the beginning of their journey through life.

YES, we all fail, of course, and as much as we might like to dwell on our successes, it’s also healthy to take stock of where we’ve come up short.

I try to teach my children who are 14 and 12 years, that the next best thing we can do is to make a mistake. The same, I always try to take with me in my leadership. “Oh … .is allowed to make mistakes?”, employees and children ask me. To this I answer a clear and resounding “YES! the fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate” – The best is obviously doing something entirely correct all the time, but it is not possible. The worst thing one can do is to do nothing. To create space for innovation, we need to create a space where it’s room to fail, this is the only way we can learn and develop. Hopefully one does not the same mistakes time twice.

In work and in life, there are two kinds of failure: actions and inactions.

Ultimately, what we regret is not failure, but the failure to act. My mantra has always been, do not be afraid to make mistakes. Therefore, I believe one must create greater room to be allowed to fail. Developing a good, self-organizational culture does not happen overnight and takes time. The main input factor in an organization is usually the intellectual capital (employee) and it is the employee who is responsible for the most valuable core processes for value creation in an organization. Then it is important that we have created an organizational culture where there is room to be allowed to fail and learn from our mistakes. The organizational culture controls unproven the daily choices, behaviour, effort, and the results that are cabinets in an organization. While we will create room for error, we must also create an opportunity to ask critical questions. It must not be so that those who set the critical issues are seen as sand in the gears and critics.

Of course, there are failures and there are failures. Some mistakes are lethal, for examples, like producing dysfunctional medicine. At no time can management be casual about issues of health and safety. But encouraging failure doesn’t mean abandoning supervision and quality control, or respect for sound practices. Just the opposite. Managing for failure requires executives to be more engaged, not less. Although mistakes are inevitable when launching innovation initiatives, management cannot abdicate its responsibility to assess the nature of the failures. Some are excusable errors; others are simply the result of sloppiness. Space must be created to ask challenging and critical questions, but I often see when control questions are asked, people go into a defensive position. This applies to both managers and employees. Those willing to take a close look at what happened and why can usually tell the difference. Failure-tolerant leaders identify excusable mistakes and approach them as outcomes to be examined, understood, and built upon. They often ask simple but illuminating questions when a project falls short of its goals:

-????????Was the project designed conscientiously, or was it carelessly organized?

-????????Could the failure have been prevented with more thorough research or consultation?

-????????Was the project a collaborative process, or did those involved resist useful input from colleagues or fail to inform interested parties of their progress?

-????????Did the project remain true to its goals, or did it appear to be driven solely by personal interests?

?-????????Were projections of risks, costs, and timing honest or deceptive?

-????????Were the same mistakes made repeatedly?

?Distinguishing between excusable and inexcusable failure

Distinguishing between excusable and inexcusable failure offers two broad benefits. First, it gives managers a tool to build a nonpunitive environment for mistake making while allowing them to encourage thoughtfully pursued projects that, should they fail, will yield productive mistakes. Second, it allows managers to non-judgmental promote the sort of productive mistake making that is the basis for learning. By revealing what doesn’t work—in the lab or in the marketplace—a failure flowing from a carefully designed and executed project provides insight into what will work.

Success can be approached in much the same way. Like mistakes, all successes are not created equal.

A success due to a fortunate accident is not the organizational equivalent of one resulting from a thoughtfully pursued project. Thus, successes might be approached with questions like those posed about failures. How much was due to good fortune, how much to the hard work of its creators? Were all contributors acknowledged? Did the success move us closer to our goals? Will it serve customers’ needs or simply merit an award from peers? By taking this perspective and raising such questions, managers can begin to treat success and failure similarly, more like the siblings they are.