Tom Lemanski's

Your Bridge to Discovery

Tom Lemanski's

How Do You Reward Failure in Your Organization or Team?

What Kind of Question is This?

We can agree that it’s a provocative question. When is failure ever the goal? So why should we ever want to encourage or reward it? What might happen if you actually did reward failure?

Rewarding Failure

I believe that the benefits of rewarding failure can apply to at least three critical success categories:

Cultural
Strategic
Quality

Of course there’s three! And so potentially powerful. Let’s briefly explore what and why.

Cultural Effects of a Risk Averse Work Environment

What Happens When You Discourage Failures?

I believe that discouraging failures discourages innovation. It’s the by-product of a risk averse culture.

And if you can believe the assertions of myself and Peter Drucker, discouraging failure hinders one of the two things that make money: innovation and marketing..

What happens to your organizations ability to innovate and grow when risk aversion and fear of failure prevail?

“There are only two things in a business that make money – innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.”

– Peter Drucker

Strategic Thinking

Learning from Failures

How might the fear of failure be undermining your strategic initiatives? What innovative approaches never get off the ground when no one wants to stick their neck out?

Failure may not be the goal. But without experiencing and learning from it success is more elusive.

To what extent is the desire for instant gratification discouraging others from starting initiatives that take time to come to fruition? At what cost?

Failure and the Pursuit of Quality

Design of Experiments (DOE)

In the discipline of quality assurance, the discovery of failure and potential failure of a product or process is a critical tool. One proven approach is Design of Experiments (DOE)

What experiments should you be conducting to discover the potential for failure and thereby avoid failure on a larger scale?

Design of Experiments (DOE) is defined as a branch of applied statistics that deals with planning, conducting, analyzing, and interpreting controlled tests to evaluate the factors that control the value of a parameter or group of parameters. DOE is a powerful data collection and analysis tool that can be used in a variety of experimental situations.

The American Society for Quality (ASQ)

Stop Killing The Messenger

When as a leader, you receive a message of failure, do you react or do you respond? You have an opportunity establish a culture of continuous, innovative improvement. Consider seizing this opportunity by asking questions like:

What did we learn from this?
What should we be doing instead?
When we adapt and adopt, what potential outcomes are possible?

Leading Positive Change by Rewarding Failure

Recognition of failure doesn’t need to be monetary. We’re familiar with the timeless perk of Employee of the Month. How about

Failure of the Month,
Most Valuable Failure
A simple stroke like “nice try”

How might you improve at:

Recognizing and embracing the value of failures
Finding new ways to acknowledge and reward those who take calculated risks for the sake of improvement

Finding Value in Failure

My Favorite Mantra for Failure

Fail Fast. Fail Cheap.

The Fast and Cheap Failure Process:

Try it.
Design experiments to test it on a small scale with a reasonable time line.
If it works; scale it.
If it doesn’t; Assess you lessons, adapt and repeat.

To be an effective leader, fear of failure is not an option. So why not work to discover new ways to use failure as a strategic tool?

Your Challenge

I challenge you to look in to the future to consider the attributes of the leader you want to become. Then let’s again ask:

How should you be rewarding failure in your organization and with your team?

More Insight and Inspiration

Fear of Failure is Not an Option – 2011 Post featuring Apollo 13 Film Clip

Quote Library on Success or Failure

“Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up.” – Chinese Proverb

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” – William Edward Hickson

Acknowledgement

I learned his provocative and challenging question about rewarding failure over 20 years ago from my colleagues Doug Brown and Mike Sleppin. I found it so impactful and paradoxical that I never needed to write it down. I remembered it ever since. Now, at long last, I have put it in writing to share with you.