In Praise Of Failure
by Miki SaxonFailure isn’t really failure unless nothing is learned.
Learning from it means that you need to look at it differently.
Few individuals or companies enjoy dwelling on what they consider failures; most pick themselves up and move forward; the strongest dissect what went wrong.
They take the time to decompose the thoughts and actions that didn’t work and document them in a ‘lessons learned’ report.
Good so far.
But what happens to the report? Is it neatly filed with the project information or under another heading?
Investing effort in lessons learned reports only to file them makes it more likely that the errors will be repeated again in the future.
And that is frequently the case.
Instead, if the goal is to learn, then learn to LAUD IT.
Look at what went wrong, not what worked;
Analyze what was done;
Understand why it was done;
Determine how to fix/improve both thoughts and actions.
IT refers to using technology to share the information, making it easily available to everyone and searchable.
Try it. LAUD IT.
Image credit: Biology Big Brother on flickr
