Increase your return on failure

Article from Harvard Business Review by Julian Birkinshaw and Martine Haas

Some pointers that I've got are:
1. Step 1: Learn from every failure
2. Step 2: Share the lessons
3. Step 3: Review your pattern of failure

On Step 1: Learn from every failure

• Begin by getting people to reflect on projects or initiatives that disappointed. Of course, this doesn't come naturally: Reviewing past problems isn't just tedious; it's painful. Most of us would prefer to invest our time looking forward, not back. 
• When something doesn't go as planned, it's an opportunity to challenge your default beliefs and adjust accordingly. We recommend spelling out what the project has taught you about each of these things: customers and market dynamics; your organization's strategy, culture and processes; yourself and your team; and future trends.
• These insights, of course, are the assets. Our exercise also has you compile a list of the associated liabilities - the projects direct costs in time and money, any external costs (reputation, for example), and any internal indirect costs (such as excessive consumption of management attention). 

On Step 2: Share the lessons

• While it's useful to reflect on individual failures, the real payoff comes when you spread the lessons across the organisation. As one executive commented, "You need to build a review cycle where this is fed into a broader conversation." When the information, ideas, and opportunities for improvement gained from an unsuccessful project in one business area are passed on to another, their benefits are magnified. 
• Shared learning also increases the likelihood of future initiatives. "The biggest mistake you can make as a leader is to shoot the messenger and bury the bad news," one executive noted. By reflecting on the positives, you build trust and goodwill and clear the pathway for others to take action on risker ideas.
• We recommend bringing senior leaders (across a unit or the whole organization) together on a regular basis to talk about their respective failures. These reviews work best when they are fast and to the point; takes place frequently, through good times and bad; and are forward looking, with an emphasis on learning. We call them Triple F reviews (Fast, Frequent, Forward looking).

On Step 3: Review your pattern of failure

• The third step is to take a bird's eye view of the organization and ask whether your overall approach to failure is working. Are you learning from every unsuccessful endeavour? Are you sharing those lessons across the organization? And are they helping you improve your strategy and execution?

Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big