Succeed or Learn: Reframing "Failure" as a Valuable Learning Opportunity

As an entrepreneur, you’re a bold leader with a higher-than-average tolerance for risk. As a successful business owner, you’re well accustomed to your professional endeavors turning out the way you envision them. No one has a 100% success rate, however. How do you deal with failure - yours and/or someone else’s? Is it necessarily a negative thing - or could failure be reframed as an opportunity to learn and innovate?

In an increasingly complex workplace and world, it’s more likely than ever that you’ll experience occasional failure. That’s why this is an appropriate time to consider how you think about it. From childhood we’re indoctrinated in a narrow, black-and-white mindset that convinces us that not only is success always good, but that failure is always bad. Not only that, but that failure always indicates someone is at fault: Someone who didn’t... do something right, pay attention, try hard enough, exercise enough caution or care... But that, frankly, is a restrictive way of thinking about failure - simply as somebody’s fault. There is a myriad of reasons for failure to occur, only some of which are caused by the reasons listed above, yet all mistakes are often lumped into the same category.

It’s important to cultivate a workplace that keeps mistakes in proper perspective and takes them in stride. That is not to say you’re not striving for a high degree of successful outcomes; it simply acknowledges that mistakes cannot always be avoided. In this healthier workplace, an employee who knows they will not be blamed for making a mistake will be more willing to admit to having made one or point out something proactively they see that could become a potential problem and precipitate a failure.

In a workplace interested in improving rather than pointing fingers, the more important question than, "Who is to blame for this failure?" is "Why did the failure occur?" From that frame of mind, mistakes can be analyzed, understood and hopefully learned from. Of course, some mistakes do fall into the category of simple human carelessness and these can be readily remedied with additional training or practice. Other failures could be caused by a process that, although followed, was inadequate for some reason to achieve the desired outcome. Still other failures are more likely when tasks have a high degree of difficulty or complexity.

Here’s where the opportunity to learn from failure enters the picture. Assessing a failure is like performing a post-mortem examination to discover what system broke down and where. Be curious and ask probing questions like, "What’s the silver lining in this situation?" Instead of bemoaning and regretting the failed attempt, ask, "Whatwas accomplished or learned that wouldn’t have come to light had it succeeded?" In general, remove the failure mindset altogether, instead, reframing it in more open-minded terms. "This attempt didn’t work," is a more actionable takeaway; you’ll know to avoid whatever misstep you encountered in the previous attempt when you try again. Much valuable intel can be culled in this process. You may discover ways to actually improve efficiency or execution. You may discover a cost-cutting measure. You may become aware of an area where a process lacks the ability to be effective when certain variables exist - or don’t.

When management is legitimately seeking to minimize failure, they communicate that fact to their team, stressing the importance of getting to the bottom of an issue. They must be emphatically dedicated to accepting feedback from employees who may proactively notice problems from the front lines before they lead to a failure. In these workplaces, employees become more mindful of their tasks and, rather than blindly following protocol, can focus on the bigger picture - the successful execution of their duties.

Still other so-called failures are simply the result of experimentation, often employed in innovative arenas. In these cases, variables are ruled out by process of elimination so that finally the successful path is discovered. Failure is considered part of the process which informs the complete project. The basic mindset behind this curious, experimental way to think about failure is one worth considering adopting in your business. Allowing your workers the freedom to fail without reproach could be a powerful way of demonstrating to them that, while you value success, a business is a work in progress which can only be improved upon but not perfected. And the surest way to improve is by learning from mistakes.

An apt example of this experimental mindset is found in the story of the invention of the microwave. According to this piece on the Celcook blog, "The microwave was invented accidentally in 1945 by a self-taught engineer named Percy Spencer, who was leading a radar project for the defense giant, Raytheon. While testing a new vacuum tube called a magnetron, he discovered that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted from the heat." Indeed, had this "mistake" not have happened in this lab, how would we today reheat last night’s leftovers?

Reframing failure as simply an opportunity to learn circumvents the "blame game," and leads to greater understanding and innovation in business.

What is your company’s attitude toward failure?