Learning To Fail

How often have you contemplated a decision and you decided it not worth the risk. If you honestly look back now what was the risk?

Was it the risk of Failure, because the other side there was also a risk of success

If you are afraid to fail are you ultimately afraid to succeed. If this is the case it can also be said that by learning to fail we will also learn how to be successful.

A child learning to walk will fall over many times and is not frightened of this failure, they are yet to be influenced by society and the stigma we generally put on failure. Our fear of failure is therefore learned. Without this as a child they ultimately learn to keep going they learn from there mistakes they adjust and try different strategies until the desired result is achieved.

But at what point in our lives does this change. Maybe its where we fail to acknowledge failure, we acknowledge participation and don't wish to upset or offend therefore teaching that failure is wrong. By doing this and failing to acknowledge failure we are also failing to acknowledge success.

So how can we change this attitude and use this to our advantage in a business and corporate setting...

First we need to start acknowledging failure and the opportunities that this can offer us. By mentoring and coaching our employees that failure is not wrong but is an opportunity to learn and advance. We need to teach our employees the skills they need to deal with failure and to take the next step in realising the opportunities that each failure affords us. This enables everyone in the business to improve and adapt to ever changing circumstances. from one persons failure as it used as a learning opportunity.

To do this we have to remove the stigma that society puts on failure in our workplace. Teach people that failure is not always bad if there is a culture among your piers of mentoring and accepting failure and learning from it then this will a culture ready and primed for success.

With Managers, coaches and mentors standing shoulder to shoulder to foster this learning to fail culture any work place can implement the skills and techniques required to learn from the failures.

This needs to be a culture fostered from the top down to ensure sustainability and effectiveness.

The following is a quote from a 2011 Harvard Business Review article Titled 'strategies for learning from failure'

Shortly after arriving from Boeing to take the reins at Ford, in September 2006, Alan Mulally instituted a new system for detecting failures. He asked managers to color code their reports green for good, yellow for caution, or red for problems—a common management technique. According to a 2009 story in Fortune, at his first few meetings all the managers coded their operations green, to Mulally’s frustration. Reminding them that the company had lost several billion dollars the previous year, he asked straight out, “Isn’t anything not going well?” After one tentative yellow report was made about a serious product defect that would probably delay a launch, Mulally responded to the deathly silence that ensued with applause. After that, the weekly staff meetings were full of color.

So by learning to fail we ultimately learn how to be successful