How can you encourage your team to use failure as a stepping stone to innovation and creativity?

Uma vez mandei um arquivo com dados sigilosos erroneamente para um cliente. O meu líder, copiado, viu o erro, me alertou e imediatamente marcou uma reunião comigo. Achei que ia ser demitido, mas a reunião foi toda pautada em como poderíamos remediar a situação, garantir o menor estrago possível e, dias depois, sentamos para pensar em formas de evitar que aquilo acontecesse novamente. Mudamos o processo, e realmente nunca mais aconteceu. Erros acontecem, podemos fazer deles uma caça às bruxas ou um momento de aprendizado e evolução. Bons líderes entendem isso.

This right here. The way to encourage teams to use failure as a stepping stone to innovation and creativity is to ensure you are not reprimanding them or creating shame around failure. If teams are comfortable failing knowing it will be used as a learning tool and not a shaming or blaming tool, you'll likely see your people take more risks and think outside the box. Even if it doesn't work out, the success is through the innovative thinking, not the failure of the idea.

All failures and adversities in life have one or all of these three gifts - 1) The Gift of Knowledge as we learn something new, about our plan, our models, our assumptions, causes of why things went wrong etc. and have new knowledge to reshape the future 2) The Gift of Power - We get stronger in our Grit, resilience, fortitude, perseverance etc. just like we build physical muscle in a gym with regular exercise. 3) The Gift of Inspiration - To be spurred on and try again, being inspired by the opportunity of the emerging future. When we acknowledge, accept and celebrate these gifts, we create safe spaces, spaces of reflection and analysis, and think of the future ahead....

Leaning from failure can only be possible if an effective root cause analysis is performed. Wrong analysis will cause failure again. 5 why's is a very basic tool and shouldn't be used for complex issues or failures. Cause and effect is one of the effective tools for identifying root cause. Gather facts and minimize bias.

Big Tech has been one of the biggest advocate of "Fail Fast" but the reality is success is attached to "Learning Fast". The focus on "failure" actually hides a more positive focus which is that of learning. If you couch the work as learning you will find your staff will take bigger more calculated risks that have bigger payoff.

The Postmortem culture at Google drove a clear focus on problems with process and automation and not the human failure. By removing the element of blame, an incident becomes a new area of opportunity for a team. Moving the mindset from failure to opportunity is the key.

Utilize failures as opportunities to pivot and enhance your approach, promoting flexibility and agility over rigid plans. Incorporate methodologies like lean startup, design thinking, or agile development to facilitate this adaptive process. Empower your team to apply their learnings from setbacks, make informed decisions, and swiftly test and validate their ideas in a cost-effective manner. This proactive stance on failures not only fuels creativity but also propels innovation.

When failure happens, i would Reach out to trusted colleagues, mentors, or friends for feedback. They can provide valuable insights and different perspectives.and to add that very few people would do that constructively so be clear on who do you choose!

one of the sound bites from the last decade is "fail fast." I would turn that around. When I joined Enterprise Business Services, I pushed the team to move quickly, and do rapid prototyping to get customer feedback. That way we don't spend a lot of resources building the wrong thing. People said "Dave wants Quick Wins." Then one of my team members said, no we want to "Win Quickly." I've now adopted that, and maybe we could say "fail fast or win quickly." It is definitely a win to fail (or have a negative result) quickly, rather than spend 18 months on a project and have it blow up in the cutover, or just fade away.

When you read, you learn a little. When you see, you learn a bit more. When you teach, you learn the most. Be open, honest and sharing your failures is the best way not only to help others but also to make a massive impact in your own life, career or business. Every time you share, you learn something new that you didn't even think of before. Sharing and teaching are fastest way to learn and grow.

Maximize the impact of lessons learned from failures by sharing them across and beyond your organization. Transform these insights into a valuable knowledge pool that can inspire and guide others. Facilitate this knowledge transfer by establishing platforms like blogs, podcasts, or webinars where your team can openly share their experiences and learnings. Additionally, engage in collaborations and networking with other teams and external partners to exchange best practices and constructive feedback, enriching the collective wisdom.

I've always held the belief that failures confined to a single team are missed opportunities for collective growth. In one instance, after a project didn't go as planned, we documented our journey, detailing the challenges faced and the insights gained. We then initiated a monthly "Failure Chronicles" webinar series, where teams across the organization shared their missteps and learnings. One memorable session involved a partner team sharing how our documented experience helped them avert a similar pitfall. By openly sharing our lessons, we not only fostered a culture of transparency and learning but also strengthened inter-departmental collaboration, ensuring that the entire organization benefited from individual team failures.

Leading by example, exhibit a growth mindset, reinforcing the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication and hard work. This perspective transforms failure from a setback to a valuable lesson. Demonstrate your own readiness to embrace failures and the learnings they bring. Compliment your team not just for successes, but also for the effort and progress they exhibit. Consistently challenge and provide support to your team, encouraging them to stretch their limits and grow both personally and professionally.

Encouraging a growth mindset in yourself and your team is crucial to embracing failure as a stepping stone to innovation and creativity. One way to foster a growth mindset is by leading by example. Be open about your own failures and show how you learn from them. Encourage your team to take risks and try new approaches, emphasizing that mistakes are opportunities for growth. Provide constructive feedback that focuses on effort and progress, rather than fixed abilities. Create a supportive environment where team members feel empowered to learn, develop, and embrace challenges. By consistently promoting a growth mindset, you can inspire your team to view failure as a catalyst for innovation and creativity.

Create an environment where creativity and experimentation are fostered and encouraged. If you are a leader, allow yourself to be creative and experiment yourself, try new things, fail... show that failing followed by learning is a part of growing.

It's important to understand that not everything that doesn't work is a 'failure' - if you're doing research into an area, or building prototypes, then you are experimenting, and a well thought through experiment is not a failure even if what you learn is 'never do this again'!

Its very important as leaders to ensure having safe psychological environment where people have freedom to raise thier voice. This is the only way where organisations can develop!

Any discussion about failure must happen in the environment of psychological safety. I recently had a conversation with my team member about a failure where she was involved. I could sense her discomfort when she entered my office. I did a few simple things, which led to a conversation vs confrontation: - I asked her to sit down (and sat next to her vs opposite her) - I asked her to give me her perspective on what happened (before providing mine) - I spoke about our failure vs her mistake (note: it may have been her mistake but the language is important to get the conversation flowing vs stuck due to search for excuses) - I asked her to tell me what she would do if she were me She left the room owning the solution vs carrying the blame!

One way is to emphasize that failure by defintion refers missing a desired outcome out of a set plan. Yet, there is an outcome that was neither desired or expected which shouldn't be overlooked but rather studied, explored or exploited to know exactly how it could be reproduced to avoid its reproduction. Therefore, the team effort wasn't completely in vain but rather it succuessfully added to the knowledge base that would suppot future success by getting the desired outcome. It is a learning journey.

Failure is part of growth and teaches us valuable lessons. Giving the team room to make mistakes and learning from them will help them grow and be more confident. What’s important is learning from the mistakes. Lessons learned from failures are more powerful than lessons learned through the normal course of life.

Failure is a funny word. It can have multiple triggers. Sometimes it's helpful to mine the failed initiatives for the elements that were successful. Maybe there were 5 activities undertaken and 2 of them were excellent and successful, but the overall result was still a failure. This is the principle of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It also encourages teams to find the nuggets of positivity that were hidden in the failure. On the next iteration or project or endeavor the plan is to keep the successful activities and tweak and change the negative ones.