Fail Spectacularly!

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
Henry Ford

Failure has a decidedly negative connotation in our culture. Sure, we all love a good turnaround story where the guy at first fails and then goes on to win, but in our own lives we forget that most successes come at the end of a road paved with mistakes. We like doers, winners and get-it-doners but all of these require a lot of doing and in doing, there are always going to be failures. Even the word failure sounds so negative, but failure is defined as: the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. So really failure is just another term for reaching for something and finding what didn’t work. We also call this learning.

For those of us leading companies and teams, it is very important we recognize that failure is just a part of growth because failure and organizational learning go hand in hand. If you or your teams never fail, that’s not a win, that’s not success; rather it means you never looked beyond what is right in front of you. You never aspired to be better, do better or create something. You were too cautious. In order to win, to succeed you have to do things and when you do things, you aren’t always going to get to right the first time. In fact, you usually won’t get it right the first time. 

So when failure predictably strikes, how can we make the most from it to push us closer to success? First, don’t overreact. It’s not the end of the world, it’s progress. Second, rather than feel shame or shame your team, have a failure autopsy. Discover what went wrong and why in a somewhat detached way. Help whomever erred take responsibility for what happened and take responsibility too because as a leader, it’s all your responsibility. Turn the failure into a positive learning event. Rather than get negative or punish, try to praise the attempt while analyzing where things veered off track. Think over or discuss with your team what happened, what you learned and what should be different next time.

When you create a culture of sharing failures as well as successes, you reward risk taking and learning--that's real leadership. The only time you should get punitive is when people continually make the same mistakes showing a lack of learning, when people fail to acknowledge their errors and when they are unwilling or unable to take the steps to fix the problem. The most successful organizations are built through steps forward and backward, course correcting along the way rather than meticulous planning and a straight line from A to B. So go ahead and fail and to do it spectacularly, just make sure you get up, dust yourself off and keep going!