The Time Till Failure

Sometimes?failure?is easy to perceive: a crash, shock or fracture. But if we focus our vision on the specific point of failure, we may miss the opportunity to learn from the run up, and legacy of it. Indeed, in some ways it’s more valuable to consider an overall?journey?of failure than simply the point of fracture, as this journey provides us greater opportunity for insight and understanding.

This journey will typically involve the context of failure (is it something breaking down, or the context that surrounds us that changes and hence exposes weakness), the opportunities for insight (which voices were dominant, which were silenced, what markers were rationalised or ignored), the cascades of failure (what impacted on other things, and how did it accelerate – and how could it have been diverted, diffused, or countered), the perception of failure (it’s possible that we fail without even realising it till much later, when judgement occurs – so how would we know that we have failed?) and the legacy of it (is failure rationalised, retrospectively judged, hidden, or is there a methodology to create an artefact of learning?).

If we view failure in this sense – as the run up, the event, and the legacy – then we may realise that the greatest value lies in the first and the third aspects of it. Whilst failure as an event is dramatic, our insight may come more from context and shadow.