Human Capital Lab

Thriving on Failure

Does your organization thrive on failure? Do you work in a culture of experimentation and risk-taking? This isn’t the most comfortable space for many executives in this volatile economy. Yet, organizations like Zappos are thriving on a culture of innovation.

Building an organization driven on innovation doesn’t require a formal R&D department. Your employees have the ideas, insights, and drive to implement innovation. Below are seven steps for building an innovative culture that thrives on failure.

• Set the strategy and communicate it effectively! A strategy for innovation must be illustrated through examples and language – your vision for the future. This takes time. To stand in a staff meeting and say “we are now going to become a team that experiments” will give the indication that this is the next flavor-of-the-month initiative. Innovation cannot be forced, and changing the culture won’t happen overnight. Employees will learn to innovate through consistent communication of successes, and just as importantly, the stories of failure.
• Brainstorm! Identify a specific time during the month for team members to brainstorm. This is a productive and important part of the work the team is doing. During the meetings, make it clear that no ideas are out of bounds. Sometimes those “crazy ideas” find focus with further discussion. In these brainstorming sessions, individuals don’t have to have all the details worked out. The idea is the purpose.
• Prepare a growth budget! Nothing speaks louder than allocating money to an innovation movement. Let it be known that some experiments will be supported financially.
• Allow teams to make decisions! Create teams comprised of varying levels and roles to determine what ideas move forward. This creates ownership in all directions. First, the individual must present a sound case for the experiment to the group. The group must then decide and stand firm in the decision to move it forward. The leader, after review, must indicate his/her commitment by approving the experiment and financial resources.
• Recognize the failures! Acceptance of failure is perhaps the number one driver of creating a culture of innovation. It helps builds trust! 75 percent of experiments conducted are going to fail. Learn from the set-backs and acknowledge the failures. What was learned? What will we do differently next time? Let’s try again!
• Document the findings! Business is sometimes cyclical. It’s likely that in three-to-five years, a similar innovation will be implemented. It is necessary that lessons learned from past failures be documented and easily retrievable to help with future initiatives. Documenting the approach, mistakes, and findings greatly impacts new and innovative ideas.
• Trust me! For the previous steps to work, all members of the team must venture with a sense of trust. As the leader, you can build the culture in many ways.
  • Thank employees for presenting ideas!
  • When ideas come up, even if they are terrible, respect them, and provide positive feedback. Don’t squash employees’ ideas or you may never hear from them again. Not all ideas are good, but all ideas might be great starting points!
  • Own the initiative even if it fails. When projects fail, learn! Make it known that no one will be held accountable for the failure, but everyone will take ownership in learning from it.

  Creating a culture where employees understand that idea exploration is important, failure is accepted, and risk-taking is the norm drives innovative teams. Savvy organizations that thrive on failure and continually learn from mistakes and take chances succeed in an ever-increasingly competitive market.

  Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, had seen his fair share of “failures” before enjoying the success of Zappos. By learning from his mistakes, and building on his ideas, he has been able to grow Zappos into one of the most enviable companies in the world. Hsieh said, in an interview with Steve Rosenbaum of MediaBizBloggers, “Entrepreneurs view failures as getting one step closer to success.”

  While not all business executives see themselves as “entrepreneurs” they are still in the business of growing their business, and innovation must be an ingredient. Innovation, after all, is not the property of entrepreneurs, and according to Hsieh, there are no points off for failing.

- Emily Redinbaugh

I thoroughly enjoyed this post. I believe innovation is critical for business today. Being a full-time senior pastor of a 123 year old congregation, I also understand how critical innovation is to fruitful ministry as well.

I also understand how critical it is to establish a culture of curiosity if innovation is going to be a reality. In our organization, as many others, it is easy to get bogged down by the day-to-day operations and routines that there is a lack of asking, “What if…”. I believe the brainstorming piece you mentioned opens the door to as well as communicates a willingness to ask the necessary questions that make innovation possible.

I hope more organizations of various types apply the steps you laid out. Thanks for your insights.

Recognizing failures is something that a ot of companies probably do, but don’t being attention to. In my opinion, the worst thing that can be done is to ignore a failure and pretend that it never happend. If we do not recognize th mistakes that have been made, we will be doomed to repeat them again.

I think all of your ideas presented were fantastic. This is a great resource that I hope many leaders will be able to use. Keeping the option open for employees to present ideas is critical. The best ideas can come from those who are doing the day to day tasks that keep an organization running.

When I think of innovation and creativity I think of something free-flowing and unrestricted. Yet Ms. Redinbaugh lays out what at times seems a very proscriptive and scheduled process. However, as I think about it, perhaps that is what is needed to to get the process started in an organization where failure is not seen as a learning opportunity but as simply failure.

I work in an organization like that and in speaking with a previous VP she told me that is why she left. We talk ideas to death and proceed with extreme caution. In her current organization she said there is a very entrepreneurial spirit and, in essence, they do thrive on failure.

When I started in my current role the hospital president said to me “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” and encouraged me to move forward with that mindset. I remember this quote and try to behave with that quote in mind, but it is harder than it seems because almost from birth we have been trained to avoid failure at all costs.

Ms. Redinbaugh suggestions on how to thrive on failure are indeed excellent. I do not know if our entire organization is ready to embrace this, but I will start it with my own team because innovation is a key to success and it must start somewhere.

I felt that this blog caught my attention from the beginning. The first question made me laugh because what organization honestly thrives on failure? Not many if any at all that I know of, most would want their organizations to succeed. The tips given were perfect so a organization does NOT fail. I believe any organization that is just starting or even having issues with success could use these to help them because more successful. Some people will tend to get excited about starting a new organization and it can lead to failure faster than the amount of time it took to get the organization up and going.

The first one, set the strategy and communicate it effectively. That is critical because communication is key with any sort of relationship, whether it is a personal, work, or any kind really. If there is no communication then more than likely there will be no success. I also feel that, allow teams to make decisions is an important one too! People will feel more involved if they can help with decision making or if there are questions. They will feel that the employees in higher up positions care and then they will want to work harder for the organization to be successful.

Overall this was a great blog because it caught the attention of myself and sometimes that can be real difficult. I am not one to go and read just anything.

What a great topic and title to bring up the discussion of owning past failures. I feel this is a critical component to forming a highly effective team. It is essential that the members work toward trusting each other and being able to call out their “My Bad”‘s. I heard a story recently where an organization actually printed what they called (please excuse my language pastor from the previous post) “F’d Up” cards. Each card was to be turned into your peers, boss or employee when you had made a mistake and were owning it and trying to learn from it. The only rule surrounding these cards was that you would get 5 at the beginning of the year and you shouldn’t have any left at the end if the year…..all cards must be used in order to show that you were risking, making mistakes and learning from them.

We loved the concept but not the name so we converted ours to “My Bad” cards. We launched it in a recent training and the employees really embraced out transparency.

Thanks! Love the topic!

It is ineresting to hear the idea of setting aside time each month to brainstorm. This time is critical for the success and innovations that the article speaks to. If dedicated brainstorming time is not allocated then the strategy will begin to fail. This sounds like common sense but it is suprising to hear how quickly these sessions are dismissed first once employees become busy.

It is the same with scenerio planning. Scenerio planning is a great tool that can be combines with innovation to anticipate changes. If dedicated time is not allocated for scenerio planning, it is most likely to be forgotton. I believe this practice will encourage and grow the creativity that you seek.

Accepting the failures and supporting accountability is easier said than done. this must be a supportive environment where there is a process to deal with failures. In this way it will encourage to not always see the failures as a negative, and take what they can from each experience.

I think these seven steps are a great plan for innovation and creativity in the work place. Dedicating time for creativity, and supporting failures with accountability are two great aspects to this plan and I believe many organizations would be beneficial in utilizing this information.

Thank you!
Amy Cox

I really enjoyed this Blog post. The title threw me off a little, which is what drew me to it! It’s all about taking chances, risks, learning from mistakes, and ultimately looking at failure as a learning opportunity.

Building an innovative culture is not an easy task. I look at the organization in which I work, and I think, “Can we ever cultivate an innovative environment”? I’m not sure if it would take a whole new staff or if there is something that can be done with the people we have. It is possible that people fail to show their innovative side because we have not been breeding an environment conducive to learning from our failures.

I’ve noticed that some of our failures that we have experienced as a company have been brushed under the rug, as if they should not be exposed. If we were to turn that around and really bring them out into the light, it is possible that those failures could be utilized as one step closer to success. This blog posed a great argument for why failures can ultimately turn into successes when utilized in the right fashion.

Coming from an organization that doesn’t like to take many risks, or experiment, this blog really interests me. It seems like organizations frequently get stuck in the same ‘ole routine, and overlook fresh new ideas. This is rather unfortunate for the organization considering that one of those “fresh new ideas” that the newest member of the team introduced, might have been a major profit maker for the Joe Shmoe VP that just ignored her!

When organizations do decide to go out on a limb, and take risks, it is important that they have all of their staff backing them. Trust is a key component to making progress with new adventures. Great work!

I found this post to be interesting and applicable to my organization because we are in the midst of transforming our culture into one that focuses on continuous improvement and innovation. The 7 steps listed above can be applied in my organization’s current improvement work. Applying each of these steps will help create a learning organization.

Brainstorming and thinking outside of the box is extrememly important and I agree that regardless of how outrageous the idea may be, leaders must not squash the ideas. I also appreciate that teams need to develop and own the ideas for change; who better to champion a change than those who are involved in the process. An opportunity for my organization is the willingness to experiment. Many times we implement change in mass rather than testing or piloting the change in one area. We need to adopt the mindset of running experiments and when a change is proven to be effective, develop a plan for further spread throughout the organization. If a change is found to be ineffective, we need to learn from this, try something else, and understand that the process failed, not the people. Organizations that become learning organization will be successful in the future.

Ms Redinbaugh’s seven steps for building an innovative culture that thrives on failure are solid steps. However, the business and current culture of the organization must be taken into consideration when implementing such an approach. In some organizations, such as consulting IT agencies that provide software solutions, it would be very tricky to exercise experimentation and risk taking without risking missed deadlines, defective products, and loss of customer confidence, to name a few. In such environments, following the established policies and procedures for software development are imperative to minimize those risks.

It is not to say that innovation does not exist in such organizations, because it does. However, care must be taken in setting the strategy and expectations. It must be made clear that though innovation is encouraged, it must be done responsibly. A process improvement plan should be put in place to ensure the proposed changes have been adequately reviewed and assessed before implementation.

These are excellent suggestions which, if followed, could turn failure into success. Failure is a part of life and a part of innovation because every great idea does not always work as we would like them to work.

I think the most interesting concept centered on building trust. I have had the opportunity to work in a variety of organizations, some large and some small. On the face of it, you would think that the smallest ones were the most trusting, however, I have found there is no connection between size and trust. Either the environment is one where trust is valued as a part of the culture or it is not. The points made here about how to build trust are excellent and I do not think meant to be the only trust building tools available. I would suggest that asking yourself a simple question every day, “Do I talk the talk and walk the walk?”. If the answer is not yes, then you must evaluate your behaviors to determine why not.

Without being genuine and sincere, I do not think a leader can be as effective as possible. Transparency has become a buzz word which should be treated with respect. Unless a leader is able to lead in an up-right manner, leaving hidden agendas at the door, sustainability will be difficult. Team members will see a leader who fails to be honest in their role and not engage. Trust is essential for a fully engaged and focused team and building trust begins with leaders who understand its value and able to share this belief with each team member.