Failure Factories

Building a High-Impact Team Through Failing Well

In the relentless pursuit of excellence, organizations often treat failure as the enemy - a setback to be avoided at all costs. Yet, in high-impact teams, failure is not just an unavoidable aspect of progress; it's a catalyst for innovation and growth. Running such a team requires embracing the concept of Failing Well, which involves encouraging failures that lead to learning from exploration tasks while leveraging failures from exploitation tasks to refine existing processes. The key is ensuring these failures don't recur, transforming them into stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks.

The Metric of New vs. Repeated Failures

To operationalize this concept, consider adopting a simple yet powerful metric: the frequency of new failures minus the frequency of repeated failures. New failures - those arising from uncharted territory or novel approaches - are invaluable. They signify that your team is pushing boundaries, experimenting, and expanding its horizons. Each new failure brings fresh insights, lessons learned, and opportunities for advancement.

Conversely, repeated failures are costly and indicative of deeper issues within the team or organization. They suggest that lessons from past mistakes aren't being internalized, leading to inefficiency, wasted resources, and potential demotivation among team members. By maximizing new failures and minimizing repeated ones, your team can maintain forward momentum characterized by continuous learning and improvement.

Creating a Culture That Encourages New Failures

Building a culture that fosters new failures while discouraging repeated ones requires intentionality and strategic effort. An effective strategy is to separate individual failure events from the behavior of consistently failing due to the same root causes.

Normalize Failure Events

Failure events should be normalized within the team. Initially, openly celebrating failures can help set this tone. Some organizations hold Failure Fests or Lessons Learned sessions where team members share experiences and insights from unsuccessful attempts. These practices demystify failure and encourage a growth mindset.

Over time, the goal is to embed the process of recognizing, evaluating, and learning from failures into the team's subconscious habits. This means moving beyond formal celebrations to creating an environment where discussing failures is as routine as discussing successes. That is, recognizing failure events should be a habitual and passive thing, not an active one.

Psychological Safety and Leadership