Management

When I was 16 years-old my best friend, Luree, and I trail rode her horses in the cool mountains of Pennsylvania at least weekly.

I remember her teaching me to jump after mastering that skill herself. Sam, her sturdy stock horse, was perfectly sized for me, but I was a novice. Lacking skill and experience, but not desire, I fell off the first time I tried to ride him over a small jump.

After helping me up, Luree made me get back on and try again. We figured out what I'd done wrong.

Sam cleared the jump, but I hadn't. I corrected my posture and was successful the second time. Luree's equestrian jumping career lasted into our college years, mine ended that day.

We are taught as children that failure isn't a good thing and that lesson stays with many of us into adulthood and the businesses in which we work. But failure isn't always a bad thing. I didn't break any bones on my fall off Sam (thankfully) but I did learn what I did wrong. I was able to correct that and be successful in the next attempt.

Too often in business, failure is always bad and something to get past. If we can hide a failure, we will work to keep it hidden. If unveiled or reported, we are quick to assign blame to anyone but ourselves (Was it Sam's fault I fell off?).

Failure, once brought to light, might also be viewed more as a quirk that doesn't require any change (since it won't happen again, e.g. lightening doesn't strike twice). But can we cultivate, learn from and adapt because of failure? Can failure actually be a good thing?
 

Try, try again
Finding failure may be the first barrier to learning from it. Yes, falling off the horse was easy to see and quite a "big" fall. Thankfully, no one else was watching.

Should we perpetuate this attitude about failure? What about important but less apparent failures? Aren't we inclined to hope no one notices? We don't often work in life-and-death situations as health-care workers would, but we can learn from the importance of their mistake-reporting methods.

What about promoting anonymous methods of reporting mistakes or failures? Not just what the error was, but potential causes (even if they're educated guesses, but not blame-focused finger-pointing)?

What could a business potentially save if it knew of smaller, but just as costly mistakes? If they could be reported and fixed, it may enhance the work of lean programs and staff reductions. What if we shared those mistakes on a regular and non-confrontational basis?
 

No blame game
Our first question should be, "What kind of failure was it?" rather than "Who is to blame?" Seth Godin wrote in Harvard Business Review of seven kinds of failures.

1. If a product or service was poorly designed, it won't work right or for very long.
2. If equipment or facilities have depreciated beyond repair or value, failure of operation is likely.
3. If shortcuts are taken and trust is eroded, a failure of trust might soon follow.
4. Internal resistance to pre-empting a coming change may cause a failure of will.
5. If management and workers stray from core competencies or work on the wrong things, it may lead to a failure of priorities.
6. When products entering the mature stage of the product life cycle are ignored and dropped for more profitable products or services, a business may suffer from a failure to quit.
7. When workers or customers aren't shown respect, the business may suffer that failure as well.

What might be some of the reasons for failure? Amy Edmonson offers nine reasons for failure in the same publication. Again, not all of them are bad. The more blameworthy reasons for failure include:

Deviance. When a person deliberately goes against policy or protocol.

Inattention. The person didn't see it coming either from too much work or too long at the job.

While these reasons may not prompt company changes, they certainly merit further investigation to understand why and what positive and negative results occurred. Deviance from the prescribed hiring process can cost the business its future. Deviance from a refund policy may not.

The next three reasons Edmonson offers may be indicative of poor training or worker overload.

When workers test a hunch or hypothesis and fail, they could save the company a great deal of time and money.

Lack of ability. May occur because someone was assigned work they weren't competent to do. Training all workers to take on some of another person's work (cross training) is essential in small businesses and can prevent some of these failures.

Process inadequacy. Can happen when overloaded workers cannot complete tasks, or they're done poorly, quickly or haphazardly.

Task challenge. A person is taken well beyond his/her capabilities. This might lead to some success but is more likely to lead to sporadic failure at best. Again, training and cross training can help avoid some of these sources of failure.

Complex processes and uncertainty are two additional reasons for failure that are less blameworthy, but create their own problems. Taking on new and complex processes, customization of production or shipping, for example, can lead to failure when unexpected things arise or novel interactions occur.

Just because the process didn't work the first time, doesn't mean it is doomed to failure the next if the unexpected novelty can be accounted for. Reasonable people can make bad decisions the first time, but not necessarily the second.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
 

Find good in failure
More praiseworthy reasons for failure can create truly meaningful learning experiences: hypothesis testing and exploratory research.

When workers test a hunch or hypothesis and fail, they could save the company a great deal of time and money. Make the mistake on a small scale and the big flop might be avoided.

Keeping good records of tests and results, as well as conditions and reasons for failed attempts, are key parts to learning from hypothesis testing.

Exploratory research is the real gold mine. Every firm, producer and retailer, should be researching products, services and methods on a small scale. Research teams should be ad hoc and from different parts of the business since we all bring unique skills to the table.

Record keeping is essential, since some of the "failures" should be revisited when conditions change. Recording conditions surrounding failure, as well as their probable/possible influences on failure, help mistakes from being repeated.

Several years ago we asked a prominent retailer if we could sit at their return counter and learn what went wrong with some of the products they sold. The resounding answer was quick and unequivocal, "No. We don't want anyone to know what goes wrong."

But, why? Like the Wizard of Oz, our secrets may be revealed. More likely, we simply don't want to shed light on problems.

But some problems or failures bring potential profits. Fix a problem and make a customer happy, then he or she is more likely to return. Give a new product to an avid customer and ask what went wrong. Then and you can save the next 20 people from having that same problem.

Should we have a post mortem on failures? Yes, especially for the big ones.

Accidents involving injury should be investigated so everyone might learn from potential causes or contributing factors. Blame isn't nearly as important as contributing causes and their relative importance.

The company should ask if this failure should be investigated because not all failures are created equally.

I was still hurting when I got back on Sam and figured out how to position my body as we crossed the jump. I did learn from that mistake, but decided I'd rather stay on the trail than jump him over obstacles.

Maybe both Sam and I contributed to my failure. After all, he did clear the jump the first time. My next attempt was successful, so I did learn from my failure. But I was wise enough to know that on the next fall, I might break something.

Lesson learned.

Bridget K. Behe is professor, horticultural marketing, Michigan State University, (517) 355-5191, Ext. 1346; behe@msu.edu.