How does your organization approach failure?
Silly question?
Okay, let’s ask another … How does your organization approach innovation?
It is rare for any new idea or concept to be fully formed and perfect the day it is suggested. Most fresh ideas and products go through much trial and error before they reach their final form. This leads us back to the initial question …
How does your organization approach failure? In order to innovate and be a leader, your organization must be prepared to deal with failure?
How do most companies deal with failure?
Responsibility and accountability are great things. Examine your company in the same way you would your own responses to failure in your personal and professional life. You may find that you and your organization punish failures more than you encourage and support risk takers and innovators. People who challenge the status quo are important to the success of your company – they may have failed, but a negative response from you is not always the answer. Having a strategy on handling failures and creatively examining how to succeed will lead to more innovation.
Have you heard your people say the following?
- “We’ve already tried that …”
- “It doesn’t work” or “That won’t work”
- “Nobody else is doing that”
- “Don’t bother suggesting anything, nothing ever changes”
- “That’s not my job”
- “That isn’t my decision”
- “What if it doesn’t work?”
- “Who’s going to take the blame for that?”
- “Last time I suggested something, they took my head off”
- “We have been doing this for a long time, it works”
- “Why should we change?”
- “You decide, you are the manager”
If you have heard any of these statements from your associates, then your organization is risk-averse and may not be as competitive as it should be. These statements are indicative of a culture that is afraid to change or innovate.
Look in the mirror.
As an owner or senior manager, do you feel that you are the smartest one in the room all the time? Do your senior people fight change because it threatens the existing comfort zones and/or your or their place in the pecking order?
How many people really embrace change?
It is easy to say you support change when it doesn’t affect you. How adaptable are you really? I suspect most of us could use a little work. Even if you are a good leader and a good manager, you can always be better.
How to move forward?
I know I am asking many simple questions. Life and organizations are much more complicated than I am allowing for, so let’s eliminate the possible “criminal” risks. Let’s say that for every opportunity, your organization has a process in place to ensure checks and balances exist. Culturally, your organization should encourage free thinking and fluid development without necessarily bankrupting the company.
Successful organizations encourage and foster innovation in a number of ways:
- They appreciate that they do not have a monopoly on good ideas.
- They realize that growth comes from evolution and incremental improvement dependent on what is happening in their environment. For example, COVID-19 has created an evolution/revolution in some organizational aspects; however, incremental improvement still has a role to play.
- They encourage new ideas and fresh approaches to old ideas, even ones that didn’t work the first, second, or third times they were tried.
- They appreciate that a fresh perspective might push an old failed idea over the top.
- They know that some people might be in the wrong seat on their organizational bus, and will try moving them to a different seat(s) rather than simply discarding the person.
- They acknowledge the “extra” that their associates do. They know that by doing more than expected their people set the stage for the organization to succeed.
- They understand that nothing is necessarily outside of their associates’ job descriptions if it helps build the company.
- They believe that whatever their associates are doing, whenever they are doing it, is adding value to the company.
- They praise people for making suggestions and have methods of rewarding new ideas and fresh approaches.
- They never assign blame to someone who tries a concept and has it fail. The organization’s attitude is always supportive.
- They always look at “What did they do right? What did they do wrong? And what could they do better next time?
- No matter what the difficulty or obstacle, they are always looking for ways to do what can be done, even if there is not a perfect solution or fit.
- They know that if they don’t constantly look at doing things better, their competition will.
- They celebrate the BOLD, the RISK TAKERS, and THE FAILURES who always try to make things better for the organization – not those associates who try to make things better simply for themselves.
- The managers and leaders of organizations who populate their organizations with the best people they can find with integrity, passion, and enthusiasm, understanding that in many ways, their associates will be better than they are doing any particular function in the company.
- They support people who make decisions, giving them praise when things work publicly, and support (bother publicly and privately) when they fail.
- They understand “checks and balances” and make decisions after examining the facts. They look at alternatives and make the best decisions they can whether they have 30 seconds or 30 days.
- They are nimble, able to adapt, and willing to improvise.
Where does innovation come from?
- People who do not accept the way things are.
- People who want more than they have now.
- Challenging existing ideas and pushing existing limits.
- Questioning conventional wisdom and standard procedures.
- Making mistakes and unintended consequences of an accident.
- A carefully planned and executed process building on those who came before us.
Does innovation happen a lot?
Not as much as it should, even in companies that might think that they are forward thinking. Everyone has blind spots: by consciously developing a positive attitude towards failure, innovation will happen more often.
Do most organizations support innovative thinking?
Publicly, most organizations say they do. In practice, my experience has been that most organizations support innovation to a point, but everyone has “protected” ideas that are viewed as untouchable. To improve, organizations must look at everything with an open mind.
The organizations that are growing and have consistently grown over the years should support innovative thinking. Unfortunately, some organizations “forget” the key elements that created the conditions for their success, namely innovative thinking. As companies go through generational shifts, the next generation may lack the “up close and personal” knowledge that the founders had and, as a result, organizational rigidity can hinder the future success of the organization.
This rigidity can happen at other times, by also forgetting the things that made them a success. For example, as successful as Apple Computers has been, they fired perhaps the most visionary industrial person in the past 50 years when they got rid of Steve Jobs. If it can happen to them, it can happen to all of us.
Some organizations try to prevent mistakes from happening and this may be counter intuitive. Organizations should try to facilitate growth and innovation by allowing their associates to grow, to innovate, to have success. Even failure is good, as it allows associates to learn how to come back from the brink without any loss of enthusiasm and with even better solutions, knowledge, and experience.
Good luck,
Paul.