Positive Errors
Mistakes have revolutionised the world. They have given birth to penicillin, chocolate-chip cookies, microwaves and even fireworks. Whilst mistakes hurt, the freedom to get it wrong fuels creativity, progression and development.
Failing can only be seen as negative if the consequences of failure outweigh the benefit of learning. The key is leadership. Leaders need to accept, embrace - even analyse - mistakes as opportunities to learn.
When Netflix proposed splitting the company into streaming services and a separate DVD service, 800,000 customers cancelled their subscription in protest. A hasty u-turn made history: the company is now a streaming and content-creating behemoth.
Stubbornness can only get you so far. Acknowledging your mistake is a difficult but vital skill required for a company to grow. Internally, junior employees, with restricted exposure, are often given free-reign to fail and fail fast. But then, following promotion, we are expected to get it right. An opportunity for reflection and analysis remains.
Consider how aviation manufacturers and operators collaborate – despite ferocious competition – to learn from failure, rather than measure each other against it.
They methodically share, examine and address causes of failure. A flight – like a business – is a complex system of mechanical equipment, maintenance schedules, fallible leaders, team dynamics and uncontrollable external influences. Analysis of aviation incidents considers the whole system – the plane and the pilot and everything in between.
Such ‘human factors’ analysis often relies on a quirkily titled ‘Swiss cheese model’ to envision how ‘holes’ in an organization’s defensive layers align to create the perfect conditions for failure.
A business ‘hole’ might be a duff decision impacting cash flow or the prolonged absence of your co-founder; it might be a change in your customer’s strategy or wider economic recession. You might be able to flex to handle one or two holes but, if they all align, the business fails.
There are patterns buried in failure. If aviation, energy, banking and healthcare industries can learn from the Swiss cheese model, so can our companies.
So, reserve the right to get it wrong and change your mind. If we share the stats and stories of our businesses, at scale, we might learn enough to tackle the root causes of failure – just as they do in other industries.