A Study of Failure - Part 2: Redirecting

I really like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). It’s a martial art (or style) that can put the mind in a very good mood and creative state. Not that I’m any good at it, but I like the type of mindset required to learn & practice. As I mentioned in the previous newsletter edition, among jiujiteiros (people who practice this sport) they say in BJJ you can only “win or learn” you never lose (catch my drift here?).?

Just like in judo, great part of learning good technique in BJJ is adopting a sense of using the opponent’s force or momentum projected towards us and channeling it to one’s advantage. In other words, learning how to redirect.?

Redirection, what is it?

In this context, Redirection is the ability to channel a failure into an advantageous outcome. It is one of those sweet attitudes that can help us overcome our own mishaps. Yes, failures have the potential to be turned or redirected into successes, we just need to know if and how redirection can take place.

My favorite example of redirection is culinary (I love food, by the way). This one is about “potstickers”, you know, those dumplings that are cooked fried, not boiled. They can be traced all the way to the Song dynasty in China (between 960 - 1280 A.D), and according to legend, a chef serving the emperor was boiling dumplings, but forgot about them and since water had boiled away, the dumplings stuck to the wok. Knowing what would happen to him if he served his majesty too late or bad food, he took the dumplings from the wok, named them on the spot, presented them as a new culinary delight, and served them. It was a hit that remains to this day.

Learning to redirect?

Redirecting failure to obtain success is not a simple matter of rhetoric or narrative. It is a matter of adopting creative thinking and curiosity, exercising intellect, and sometimes applying grit to look for solutions.

In 1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming was studying the flu. He noticed that one of his Petri dishes had been contaminated by mold; needless to say, it was an undesirable outcome that could have resulted in the immediate tossing of the dish. Dr. Fleming had been curious about previous samples that grew mold and its reaction to a human tear. He decided to study the moldy sample. This decision led to the discovery of the penicillium fungus, from which a non-toxic antibiotic was developed. That discovery has saved billions of lives throughout history.

If we were to learn how Dr. Fleming was able to come up with such a medical miracle, it’d pay to stop seeing this as a mere fluke. After all, the moldy dish could have been simply accounted as a failed sample and tossed. But Dr. Fleming chose to study it further, resulting in a medical scientific discovery. What could have been considered a failed attempt to study the flu, resulted eventually in a scientific miracle.??

While most of us might not end up with a Nobel Peace Prize for a scientific discovery, we can still help organizations succeed in the midst of crises or failing scenarios. We can always ask ourselves during apparent failures: “What can be learned from this experience?”, “Is there potential for a beneficial outcome?”, “Can this result still benefit our organization, even if it’s in a different area? Can these results help us fulfill the mission and vision of our organization? “How does this result compare with the mission and vision of our organization?”?

The answers to these questions might pleasantly surprise us, and if not, it can help us make progress towards better solutions.

Redirection must not trump responsibility

Ownership of our decisions and a strong sense of responsibility are a precondition for an effective redirection of failure. Otherwise, we might not be able to internalize whatever lessons the scenario has presented us.

A creative mindset is a good trait to have, and yet an important note is that redirecting a failing scenario into a successful one should NOT be confused with deflecting blame towards another person or team (more on that later). It should not be applied as a way to weasel ourselves out of responsibility either. The bucket must stop somewhere, and if it’s with us, let’s just have the courage to accept it and own it. Sometimes as a team adopting the mess left by one of our members else is necessary. Our creative and innovative self must be put to use into coming up with solutions instead of playing the blame game.?

Collective Responsibility to Redirect Failure

A classic example of this was an incident right before the release of one of my favorite movies of all time, “Toy Story 2”. In his book, Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull, tells the story of how a member of Pixar had erased the only finished copy of the movie in the studio right before its release. In a moment of collective responsibility and team dedication everyone started scrambling to find a copy of the whole finished footage, until they got the copy from a team member who was on maternity leave.

When asked about the person who actually erased the copies of the finished product, Mr. Catmull says that time was never spent on finding a culprit, and that became a defining moment for the company. It was the test that defined the adoption of “failure” as an intrinsic part of creation for Pixar. You can find more insights on failure by Ed Catmull here.