The Other "F" Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work - Hardcover

Danner, John; Coopersmith, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1119017661 ISBN 13: 9781119017660

Publisher: Wiley, 2015

Synopsis

Leverage the power of failure in your organization

Nobody wants to fail, but failure is a fact of life. Most of us treat it as a regrettable, even shameful, event best overlooked. In truth, failure can be a game-changing strategic resource that can help you and your organization achieve the greater success you crave.

The Other "F" Word shows how successful leaders and teams are putting failure to work every day - to re-engage employees, spark innovation and accelerate growth. Authors Danner and Coopersmith - with their rare blend of senior-level executive experience, global advising, teaching acumen and cross-discipline perspective - share these valuable new practices, and show how they can improve results across your organization. Based on exclusive interviews with prominent leaders and insightful examples from their own in-depth work, the book features a practical seven-stage framework to liberate failure as a force to advance your leadership agenda. After all, everyone creates and confronts failure on a daily basis. Why not use it to your advantage? The Other "F" Word shows you how to:

• Start an open, productive conversation about failure across your organization
• Reduce the fear of failure that stifles initiative, creativity and engagement
• Anticipate, prepare for and respond to failure, so you can leverage it when it happens
• Harness failure as a catalyst to drive innovation, improve performance and strengthen culture

Failure's like gravity – pervasive and powerful. Whether you're a leader or team member of a startup, a growing business, or an established enterprise, failure is today's lesson for tomorrow. Let The Other "F" Word show you how to apply this lesson and take your company where it needs to go.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Other "F" Word

"Great innovators don't fear failure. They build on it. In this pragmatic guide, Danner and Coopersmith tell you how to think about failure in a positive way—and use it to create value."
—WALTER ISAACSON, President, Aspen Institute, former Chairman/CEO, CNN, bestselling biographer

"Danner and Coopersmith show you how to change your relationship with failure. Start putting this book to work before you make another move—if you want to succeed."
—GUY KAWASAKI, startup guru and business evangelist

"Whether you're a hardened CEO or a rising star, don't overlook failure. It might point the way to your next high-impact venture or where you ought to pivot. Danner and Coopersmith have translated their decades of experience with startup, mid-size, and global businesses into a practical and creative executive's guide."
—LINDA ROTTENBERG, cofounder and CEO, Endeavor

"This book offers valuable perspective and an excellent guide to Silicon Valley's unique global advantage: acceptance and embrace of failure. It tells you 'everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask' about failure—and success."
—VIVEK WADHAWA, Stanford, Duke, and Singularity University

"Executives today need the no-nonsense, practical insights The Other "F" Word delivers on how you can leverage failure to inform and even inspire your organization. And since failure knows no boundaries, this book promises to be a vital resource for intelligent leaders everywhere."
—TAMMY ERICKSON, London Business School fellow, award-winning author

"A lifetime in high-risk environments has taught me that failure can be an extraordinarily rich source of success. So take Danner and Coopersmith's spot-on advice: Don't just fail, learn. Don't just learn, grow. The Other "F" Word shows you how, with a great deal to offer even the most canny executives."
—SCOTT DELMAN, Tony Award-winning producer, The Book of Mormon

"Being afraid to fail means you'll be afraid to try. Playing it safe gets you nowhere. That's why the Lean Startup embraces failure as a key resource. Whether entrepreneur or executive, you can use this essential book to harness failure to get the results you want."
—STEVE BLANK, father of the Lean Startup movement

For more, visit www.TheOtherFWordBook.com

From the Inside Flap

Everyone wants success. Organizations want greater innovation, stronger growth, and deeper employee engagement. If you're an executive, entrepreneur or team member, you know how hard that is to do. The good news is you're sitting on a largely untapped strategic resource that can help, but most organizations and managers prefer not to talk about it. It's failure, the "Other F Word"—and it's one asset you and your colleagues create and pay for every day. You might as well put it to work.

How? In this provocative book, the authors share failure-savvy insights from exclusive interviews with leaders of large multinationals, small and mid-size businesses, and startup ventures. Danner and Coopersmith add their unique interdisciplinary background and perspectives as executives, entrepreneurs, board members, and advisors to global enterprises and growing companies. As professors at the University of California Berkeley and Princeton, they also contribute their original research and classroom experience with students and executives from around the world.

Their practical 7-stage Failure Value Cycle helps you avoid failure in the first place, recognize it earlier, deal with it better when it happens (which it will), and leverage it to drive stronger performance. Danner and Coopersmith can help you unlock the potential of failure by respecting its inevitability, taking it out of the realm of taboo, talking about it openly, learning from it, and applying its lessons.

Failure's like gravity—a pervasive, powerful fact of life. You may want to defy it, but you can't deny it. And, like gravity itself, failure can be harnessed toachieve the success you want. Managed effectively, it can help you better serve the needs of your customers and investors, build stronger trust within your organization, and inspire greater creativity, commitment, and confidence across your organization.

Tap into the power of The Other "F" Word to reap the rewards of a more failure-positive approach to your organization's most important priorities. Put failure to work today!

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1119017661
• ISBN 13: 9781119017660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288