Why Doesn't Everyone Learn from Failure?
ABHIJIT BHADURI
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Have you ever noticed that we only invite successful people to talk about failure and the lessons they learned during that process? Do we learn more from our failures than our success? There are many more failed entrepreneurs than the successful ones. If we all learn from failure, shouldn't every failed entrepreneur become successful eventually?CREATING A REFLECTION JOURNAL
Francesca Gino, behavioral scientist from Harvard Business School, had conducted a study where she divided trainees into groups.One group had to finish up the last 15 minutes of the day closing work related issues. The other group spent the last 15 minutes writing about what they learnt that day. They had to answer the question, `What did I do to accomplish that task?' Those who maintained the learningreflection journal scored almost 23% more than the group that spent the time doing some more of what they had done during the day. Shouldn't we all be doing just that? When offered the option of reflecting or doing more tasks, people chose the latter.
REFLECTION MAY HELP ASK BETTER QUESTIONS
Most organizations place a premium on activity, especially when things are going off track. Managers will often nudge their team members to do “something... anything“ rather than to sit around and reflect. Activity often assures people that they are trying to fix the problem.
When a sales team misses their target it is worth questioning the assumptions that led them to provide inflated forecasts in the first place.
WHO DO WE ASCRIBE FAILURE TO?
It is easy for leaders to attribute failure to factors outside of their control rather than their own inability to read market signals. Organizations are often guilty of encouraging people to ascribe all success to their own brilliance and competence while looking outside to attribute failure. Research shows people are much more likely to learn from that mistake when they take personal responsibility.
Of course people also learn from others' mistakes and their own successes.That often happens in case of surgeons where complications that suddenly arise could well be the cause of failure while the relatives of the patient will always hold them accountable.
THE DIGITAL TSUNAMI
Creating a culture where the employees experience the psychological safety to own up errors can be the greatest contribution of a leader in the workplace.The digital shifts place a premium on innovation and speed. Creating small prototypes and testing them with consumers will help organizations move faster than their competition. This needs a very fundamental change in the way we view failure and innovation.
Jeff Bezos believes that failure and invention are inseparable twins. He argues that “To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it's going to work, it's not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there“.
In the analog world, organizations would run grand experiments and showcase them to the world only when it worked perfectly. In the digital world, continuously building small prototypes to take to consumers is the new approach to innovation. We might as well get over our fear of failure.
Francesca Gino, behavioral scientist from Harvard Business School, had conducted a study where she divided trainees into groups.One group had to finish up the last 15 minutes of the day closing work related issues. The other group spent the last 15 minutes writing about what they learnt that day. They had to answer the question, `What did I do to accomplish that task?' Those who maintained the learningreflection journal scored almost 23% more than the group that spent the time doing some more of what they had done during the day. Shouldn't we all be doing just that? When offered the option of reflecting or doing more tasks, people chose the latter.
REFLECTION MAY HELP ASK BETTER QUESTIONS
Most organizations place a premium on activity, especially when things are going off track. Managers will often nudge their team members to do “something... anything“ rather than to sit around and reflect. Activity often assures people that they are trying to fix the problem.
When a sales team misses their target it is worth questioning the assumptions that led them to provide inflated forecasts in the first place.
WHO DO WE ASCRIBE FAILURE TO?
It is easy for leaders to attribute failure to factors outside of their control rather than their own inability to read market signals. Organizations are often guilty of encouraging people to ascribe all success to their own brilliance and competence while looking outside to attribute failure. Research shows people are much more likely to learn from that mistake when they take personal responsibility.
Of course people also learn from others' mistakes and their own successes.That often happens in case of surgeons where complications that suddenly arise could well be the cause of failure while the relatives of the patient will always hold them accountable.
THE DIGITAL TSUNAMI
Creating a culture where the employees experience the psychological safety to own up errors can be the greatest contribution of a leader in the workplace.The digital shifts place a premium on innovation and speed. Creating small prototypes and testing them with consumers will help organizations move faster than their competition. This needs a very fundamental change in the way we view failure and innovation.
Jeff Bezos believes that failure and invention are inseparable twins. He argues that “To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it's going to work, it's not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there“.
In the analog world, organizations would run grand experiments and showcase them to the world only when it worked perfectly. In the digital world, continuously building small prototypes to take to consumers is the new approach to innovation. We might as well get over our fear of failure.
Source: Economic Times, 19-08-2016
