“A natural consequence of punishing failures is that employees learn not to identify them, let alone analyze them, or to experiment if the outcome might be uncertain” Amy Edmondson on ‘failing intelligently’

Another extract from an upcoming summary from Mark Cannon & Amy Edmondson about ‘failing intelligently’.

They talk about the various technical, social and structural barriers for organisations to effectively learn from small & large failures.

In this section they zero in on the individual and manager-levels:

· “Even outside the presence of others, people have an instinctive tendency to deny, distort, ignore, or disassociate themselves from their own failures, a tendency that appears to have deep psychological roots”

· “The fundamental human desire to maintain high self-esteem is accompanied by a desire to believe that we have a reasonable amount of control over important personal and organizational outcomes”

· “the positive illusions that boost our self-esteem and sense of control and efficacy may be incompatible with an honest acknowledgement of failure, and thus, while promoting happiness, can inhibit learning”

· “Managers have an added incentive to disassociate themselves from failure because most organizations reward success and penalize failure”

· And “holding an executive or leadership position in an organization does not imply an ability to acknowledge one’s own failures”

· “Ironically enough, the higher people are in the management hierarchy, the more they tend to supplement their perfectionism with blanket excuses, with CEOs usually being the worst of all”

· “Organizational structures, policies and procedures, along with senior management behavior, can discourage people from identifying and analyzing failures and from experimenting”

· “Many organizational cultures have little tolerance for – and punish – failure”

· “A natural consequence of punishing failures is that employees learn not to identify them, let alone analyze them, or to experiment if the outcome might be uncertain”

· “Most managers do not have strong skills for handling the hot emotions that often surface – in themselves or others – in such sessions”

Ref: Cannon, M. D., & Edmondson, A. C. (2005). Failing to learn and learning to fail (intelligently): How great organizations put failure to work to innovate and improve. Long range planning, 38(3), 299-319.