Failure is an inevitable part of any business venture.
Although thereâs a lot of rhetoric around the importance of failing fast and often, the fear of failure can still interfere with innovation and productivity.
Furthermore, although company leadership may stress the importance of learning from failures, in psychologically unsafe organizations itâs still likely to be punished.
When failures are frowned upon, your focus can easily shift from âWhat have I learned from this failure?â to âHow can I downplay this failure and minimize its impact?â
Worse, the failure might be hushed up to prevent leadership from finding out about it.
Leaders and employees alike must recognize the value of failure and learn to approach it intelligently to achieve professional growth. Hereâs an overview of intelligent failure and how to promote it.
What Is Intelligent Failure?
Failure isnât inherently good or bad. The context surrounding the failure and the steps taken afterward determine its value.
Many failures are preventable and unnecessary. There are two primary categories of avoidable failures:
- Basic failure: A result of carelessness or ignorance
- Complex failure: A result of multiple factors, none of which would have caused failure on their own
According to Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson, intelligent failure is different in the sense that itâs intended to help identify the best path forward.
Intelligent failure is comprised of four factors:
- It takes place in a new territory where there isnât an existing playbook
- Itâs in pursuit of a goal or an opportunity
- Itâs informed by available knowledge
- Itâs not bigger than it needs to be to be informative
Below are five tips for failing intelligently at your organization.
How To Fail Intelligently
1. Do Your Research
Intelligent failure is guided by existing knowledge.
âIf there is a way to do it right, please do it right the first time,â advises Edmondson in the Teamraderie Leadership Lab event The Science of Failing Well. âI donât like to see failures that could have been successes if someone had only done their homework.â
Itâs also important to remember that the end goal of intelligent failure is learning from it in order to ultimately achieve success.
As Edmondson says, âYou have to be willing to confront [failure] head on and figure out where and how to do the fail fast part so that when it really matters youâre doing the succeed beautifully part.â
2. Avoid the âBlame Gameâ
Failure can often result in the âblame game.â If failure is punished and perceived as a mistake rather than a learning opportunity, nobody will want to be held accountable.
This can result in accusations and conflict escalation.
Organizations must encourage the pursuit of accountability, and in doing so, celebrate those who accept accountability and truly learn from their mistakes.
âCompanies donât think enough about how their real asset is their learning capacity, not their performing capacity,â says Edmondson in The Science of Failing Well. âThe performing capacity accounts for yesterdayâs success, but it wonât get us tomorrowâs success.â
3. Learn From Othersâ Failures
Itâs best to avoid making the same mistakes others have made.
âLearn as best you can vicariously from other peopleâs failures inside the company, so you donât have to repeat themâthatâs wasteful,â advises Edmondson in The Science of Failing Well. âIntelligent failure is not intelligent the second time around.â
Once again, itâs important to leverage as much existing knowledge as possible before starting a project. If someone has attempted the same thing, learn why it didnât work so that you donât make the same mistake.
4. Learn From Your Personal Failures
Every employee fails at some point.
Even if the failure itself wasnât approached intelligently, itâs always important to learn everything you can so that you donât make the same mistakes in the future.
To learn from personal mistakes, Edmondson recommends stopping, challenging, and choosing:
- Stop: âPause the unhelpful thinking and take a cool, analytical look at the situation,” suggests Edmondson. “Itâs the âwhat happened?â question.â
- Challenge: âChallenge the unhelpful thinking and engage in truly learning-oriented thinking,â advises Edmondson.
- Choose: âWe canât change the past,” says Edmondson. “We can only change the future and then choose that better path. Choose the learning over the wallowing.â
âAll failures are learning opportunities, even the unintelligent ones,â says Edmondson. âWe still, in fact, can learn from those tooâand we should.â
5. Create Psychological Safety
There are far too many examples of preventable failures where an employee downplayed an issue or was simply too afraid to step up.
In some situations, bringing up a potential issue is punished since it can result in missed deadlines or reduced profits.
These failures are entirely unintelligent and indicative of a lack of psychological safety.
âPsychological safety describes a work environment where people believe that speaking up is feasible,â says Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson in the Teamraderie Leadership Lab event, Creating a Fearless Organization. âNot easy, necessarily, but expected, desired, welcomed.â
When an organization has psychological safety, an employee wonât be afraid to point out an error or potential failure. This is particularly important when thereâs the potential for a complex failure.
âA complex failure is one that I define as having multiple factors that contributed to it, any one of which on its own would not have caused a failure,â says Edmondson. âThe two big things you can do is eliminate as much complexity as possibleâthereâs some necessary complexityâand create as much psychological safety as possible so that the news travels fast.â
Build Psychological Safety With Teamraderie
Learning to accept and learn from failure is crucial to creating a psychologically safe organization.
Psychological safety is the foundation of creating an innovative, communicative, and accountable work environment where toxicity isnât tolerated and teamwork is prioritized.
Is your organization ready to think big, fail gracefully, and innovate fearlessly? Bring your team on a psychological safety journey co-created with Amy Edmondson today.