Jurgen Klopp And The Art Of Failure: Talk About It, Don't Avoid It

Not for the first time, Jurgen Klopp is right. Failure is inevitable. The important thing, he says, is how we talk about failure by developing a constructive culture to analyse it carefully. That's how to stop making mistakes. Not talking about it is the worst thing we can do.

He was referring to the terrible decisions which affected his Liverpool team in a recent football match with Tottenham Hostpur. I'm talking about the decision that led me to fail.

Failure. You don’t often read that on LinkedIn where it’s all about triumphs, new jobs, endless thumbs-up and personal aggrandisement. But maybe this site needs to explore the other, more recognisable side to work and careers. We need to talk about failure – why it happens, why it matters, why it’s necessary. So this is a story about my recent failure – and why my client failed even more spectacularly.

The work we’ve created has won awards and garnered extensive media interest. It’s been an incredible team effort, especially considering the chaotic blame culture that exists within the company’s middle ranks. As an external consultant, I’m very often out of the firing line.

However, on this occasion the CEO asked for something to be done a certain way. One of the ambitious executives (my direct report) disagreed and advised me to do it a totally different way. In my view, the wrong way. We argued, I lost (inevitably), got told what to do and went away and…well I’m afraid to say I didn’t do what I was told. I did what the CEO asked me to do in the first place.

I think the work was good but it was rejected by my direct report who refused to share it with anyone else, promptly cancelled my contract and brought in another, bigger consultancy. My failure was that I didn’t play the political game, I selfishly chose sides in a hubristic challenge.

One could also argue that the failure lies with the client, where a dysfunctional leadership team puts personal bias before collective achievement. That lack of collegiate openness happens everywhere and I just got caught in the crossfire. But I didn’t help myself.

However, it’s one of those failures that I have no regrets about because, having just read a brilliant new book by Amy Edmondson – Right Kind Of Wrong – I realise that failure, when treated openly and constructively, is utterly essential in business. We hide and lie about failures, pretend they’re not ours, refuse to admit them. And it makes things worse.

Amy is one of the world’s foremost management professors and her research shows that the best teams don’t make more errors, they admit to making more errors. Poorly-functioning teams go out of their way not to admit them and so are destined to repeat them or – and this reflects my experience – don’t harness a culture where mistakes are spotted early and rectified before it’s too late and costly.

We can’t learn from mistakes if we deny that they ever happened. And, much as I like platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, Medium, Substack and others (you’ll find my rantings everywhere!), they aren’t places where people discuss failure in a constructive way. Almost as if doing so is a sign of weakness. Instead, we tell everyone how brilliant everything is (or terrible, on Twitter/X) and bury our failures deep within.

Corporate denial has been ubiquitous for decades. Organisations believe their strength is built upon pursuing perfection and covering backsides if, and when, that pursuit fails. Just look at how the Post Office destroyed lives, its business and reputation.

Of course we must strive for perfection but do so within a framework that allows people to make mistakes, own up to them, openly report them without fear of condemnation and backstabbing. So that solutions can be found faster. As Amy says, it’s not about ‘failing fast’ as the empty Silicon Valley mantra would have us believe, but failing smarter so that we can cultivate an intelligent response to failure.

We all make mistakes. Especially referees in a high-octane sporting environment. The key is to ensure that we learn from them and to be unafraid of making them. I made a mistake and lost a client. If the identical thing happens again, I’ll probably submit two versions of the same piece of work so that the client can make up their own mind. I’ll have over-delivered but at least I’ll be able to say that I did the right thing. My client on the other hand needs to allow healthy internal debate to prevent far more consequential mistakes from happening in the future.

Perhaps we can use LinkedIn to make a success of failure, to be unafraid to admit mistakes, write about and discuss them, and improve everyone’s learning in the process. Although obviously since I’ve only ever made one mistake in my entire career, I’ll have to leave the next piece to you…