Synopsis
People and organisations can either fail well or fail badly. If an incident is managed well, people and the organisation they are in will fail well. They will learn and adapt as a result of the failure, understand the fault lines in their processes and increase their resilience. Ultimately, they will grow more successful.
However, people and organisations too often fail badly. The impact of an incident or failure instead results in blame, failure to take responsibility and ultimately, a failure to really understand why something has happened and learn from it in a way that allows both organisation and individual to learn and grow.
Both organisations and individuals therefore need to develop a strategy to fail well. This short booklet uses examples from business, entrepreneurs, parenting, education, healthcare and science to demonstrate the breadth of the issues involved with failure and will enable readers to understand how broad these issues are and how many situations the same principles can be applied to.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
If you have a child in education, you may have come across the concept of growth mindset pioneered by Carol Dweck4. This argues simply that there are two types of people. There are ‘fixed mindset’ people and ‘growth mindset’ people. You may recognise the characteristics of each of these in yourself, friends, family or colleagues. It is quite a simplistic but useful way of looking at things but it’s not without its critics. Characteristics of a fixed mindset include people who are defined by their failures or successes. They see their skills as something they are born and not something they can change. They believe that they are either good at something or they aren’t. Therefore, challenges can be something to avoid because they may reveal a lack of skill or ability and there can be a tendency to give up easily. Effort is unnecessary and something you do if you aren’t good enough i.e. don’t have enough natural ability. If you give a fixed mindset person critical feedback, you may find that they get quite defensive and take it personally, because they are defined by their success or failure. When setbacks happen, they tend to blame others and they get discouraged. However, characteristics of a growth mindset include people who perceive that their skills can come through hard work. Obviously, there is sometimes a degree of natural talent, but all very successful people have had to work hard even when they have natural ability. They hold the view that they can always improve and therefore challenges can be an opportunity to learn and grow as well as develop persistence. Effort is viewed as essential and is the path to mastery of a skill. Growth mindset people tend to ask for feedback. They see it as a useful way of learning as it will identify areas that others can see need improvement. Setbacks are therefore seen as a wake-up call to either try harder next time, do something different or find ways around the problem. The issue is this: Fixed mindset people tend to fail badly. They give up easily, they blame others and they try not to take responsibility. Whereas growth mindset people tend to fail well. They persevere, they take responsibility and they demonstrate learning.
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