Strategies for learning from failure
This article argues that organizations find it hard to learn from failures due to misunderstanding the nature of the failure, and defaulting to blame, even if the original intention was good. This leads to a mentality that all failures are bad, even ones that illuminate new business opportunities or learning.
It argues that failures fall into three categories:
- Preventable
- Complexity Related
- Intelligent
How managers react to failure and how they respond will set the tone for everyone else in the team. The article also instructs that pilots for experimentation should be done in hostile conditions where failure is most likely, not in perfect conditions where success is most likely - as rolling out a pilot without knowing its weaknesses can lead to failure.