What are the best practices for sharing innovation failures in your organization?

Innovation is not only about success and winning at the first shot, but learning through failures and iterations. Here are some tips for innovation leaders based on my learning journey, 1. Create a safe environment: Fostering a culture where employees feel safe sharing failures, understanding that failures are opportunities for growth and learning 2. Don't celebrate only successes, celebrate experimentation: Acknowledge that failures are integral part of the innovation process 3. Lead by example - Share your own failures openly 4. Iterate and pivot - Encourage your teams to iterate on failed projects pivoting them to new directions based on lessons learned 5. Establish process and systems for continuous learning and improvement

- Without psychological safety, expecting people to take risks, let lone admitting failure publicly is a myth - open culture fosters sharing failure & leaders have to set an example - it could seem tricky to balance accountability, performance & failure but maintaining small teams & a decentralized company structure, flat & agile culture does help - celebrate failure & draw road maps to get the RoI in retry & celebrate success while reiterating the failures it entailed - Lead by example, authenticity & vulnerability are key - Explain openly the iterative nature of the approach. Normalize faking till making it. Perfection is a silent killer to innovation. Ready is better than perfect in small chunks. Sprint and retrospective are vital

Before starting the practice of sharing innovation failure stories, you must work on preparing the right culture & innovation. For example: - Create a supportive and psychologically safe environment: Encourage open communication and transparency by emphasizing that failure is a natural part of the innovation process and not a reflection of individual competence. - Focus on the learning and growth opportunities: Emphasize the lessons learned from the failure rather than dwelling on the negative aspects. - Recognize and reward those who share failures. - Institutionalize the practice of sharing failures: Create regular forums or events dedicated to discussing and learning from both successes and failures.

Data-driven failing forward. Failing forward is a muscle that is hard to train at a corporate organization, but in order for any innovation to be successful, this is a culture shift we need. To do this, we need a safe environment that welcomes failure and brings focus on the problem, not the solution. Ensuring that the scrum masters are asking continuously for objective feedback and follow up on why the adoption rate of a POC is not picking up, so we can adjust the proof-of-concept until it reaches product-market fit (or in a big corporate - are being adopted by other sites, by more people, get real traction,...)

In my experience you absolutely must have a culture that allows psychological safety. The ability to share without judgement or fear of repercussions. Once that is established you have to lead by example. We all have stories of failures throughout our career and if we are not willing to be open and vulnerable then how can we expect others in the organization? Share those stories publicly with your network and close peers to gleam how they do it in their networks. As a member of the CIO Association of Canada, we share these type of stories all the time. In the end, be vulnerable and transparent!

It’s about creating a learning culture. It is then natural to share learning to get smarter versus a superficial and defensive review of what happened. It starts at the top but must be taught to an organization. Most don’t think deeply enough to extract true learnings as positioning of what happened is the priority to maintain your career progression. We teach fortune 250 companies to do this everyday.

Embracing innovation failures paves the way for groundbreaking resilience. It's not merely about what went wrong, but about the treasure trove of insights that shape our future strategies. This is where intellectual humility meets strategic acumen, transforming setbacks into progress.

In work environments where collaboration and teamwork are celebrated and encouraged, failures often serve as the basis for new ideas. Failures should be viewed as learning opportunities that can be leveraged to develop innovative ideas and concepts worthy of further exploration.

Ironically, exploring and executing on innovation pathways (products and programmes) almost always requires failing. Innovation happens on the edge for a reason. It takes substantial work trying to cross into the mainstream. Embedding a culture of acceptance is key to sharing insights from innovation initiatives that have failed. Without it, you run the risk of repeating behaviour and actions that contributed to those failures. The main challenge to embedding this accepting culture comes back to quantifying returns, and its impact to the bottom line. This should be addressed by quantifying innovation returns over a longer period i.e. 5 to 7 to 10 years, similar to utilising patient capital when investing.

The danger here for me is a cultural one. Having worked globally, international cultural nuances can impact how failure is perceived, particularly by the wider organisation. For example, having worked in Japan for long periods, although failure might be seen as something to celebrate (if done right) in the innovation team, the wider business can see this as weakness, and perhaps even something to be ashamed of. Vice versa, in the ‘fail fast’ accepting culture of the UK (mostly!) failure can be seen as something brave and bold…but sometimes it’s even celebrated even when we don’t learn from it. Cultural context then is something that absolutely should be considered as a key risk when sharing innovation failure.

In my previous work experience, sharing innovation failures was a bit like that time we tried to create a coffee machine that also made omelets - let's just say, it didn't exactly revolutionize the breakfast industry. In all seriousness, though, by openly discussing our failures, we discovered some valuable insights. We realized that while coffee and omelets may not mix, transparency and a culture of learning definitely do. This approach helped us mitigate costly risks and avoid pouring resources into the next coffee-omelet hybrid. So, in the end, our quirky coffee machine taught us the importance of innovation with a side of humility.

While this article considers sharing innovation failures internally, it's equally important for technology leaders to extend this practice externally. Joining a group like the CIO Association of Canada (or any other cross-industry group/association) offers a unique opportunity to share and learn from failures with cross-industry peers. This external network broadens our perspective, deepens our knowledge, and accelerates innovation across different sectors. It's an invaluable resource for any technology leader looking to stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape.