work.” Thomas Edison
One of the things we learn in our games as kids is that success comes after some failures. This is particularly true for competitive games. Losing in a game as a kid is no big deal, and every time you play, no matter if you win or lose you get better at it. This freedom enables us to explore different approaches to the game and be creative. Then, moving into education, the kids are put into a situation where they are expected to succeed in everything, and failure sticks with them even if they eventually learn from it (e.g. bad marks still weight your average down even if you eventually learned the thing). And then, moving into the workplace, where in many companies failure is taboo. Many companies try to hide their failures, and many company cultures make the individual very uncomfortable with the slightest failure. Few companies openly declare their failures and move on (http://www.yousaytoo.com/google-wave-terminated/356998).
My point in all that is simple – in order to create successful, innovative products the company culture should tolerate failure.
Let me try to explain the above in just one example. Consider an engineer assigned a task to build something. For the first time in history of mankind, he starts with the wrong approach. It might be a poor technology choice, an unforeseen complication or simply some bad design decisions. Halfway through the process, he realizes this, and sees a better way of building the artifact, but he has already “wasted” several months (they are not actually wasted, he gained a lot of insight into the problem area). Now he is faced with two options:
- Go back to his boss, explain the situation, explain the pros (better product, cheaper maintenance, etc.) explain the cons (product will be delivered later) and make his case for steering the project into the right direction
- Continue on the wrong (ok, at least sub-optimal) path and use the necessary amount of duct tape to deliver a working, but poor product which will drag the organization into a lot of maintenance costs in the long run
There is no universal truth on the above decision. I am not claiming that investing more time for a better product is always the right decision. Sometimes the time to market is just as critical as is quality. Sometimes, the boss is pointy-haired.
But if the organization has a culture in which failure is not tolerated, or at least frowned upon, the boss might never get a chance to pick option one.
Its even worse, since simply the fear of failure stifles innovation. If the designers and engineers don’t even consider failing as an option, they will not explore new areas or take bold unorthodox decisions. But these bold decisions are usually what you need to create an exceptional product.
Successful product design and innovation involves a lot of trial and error, just as games and scientific research do. And while we don’t make a big deal if our kids lose in a competitive game, or if our scientists spend their budget on a dead-end research, we create organizations in which failure is stigmatized.
The best thing you can do if you want your organization to deliver good and innovative products is to create a company culture in which it is OK to fail. In which everyone involved in the process is not afraid to explore alternatives and realizes that great success comes after some failures.
