Failure… the ultimate F word
I saw a post on LinkedIn the other day from the CEO of a company who told the story of how a half eaten KitKat had been included with a customer’s order of other non-food items.
General unpleasantness had ensued, including the customer accusing the CEO’s company of being a COVID-19 super-spreader. Reading between the lines, it seemed that a lot of effort had to be put in to persuade the aggrieved customer that this was an accident and not a deliberate attempt to target them with viruses or half-eaten chocolate.
However 2 things really struck me about the story. The first was that the CEO obviously had a sense of humour as he was intending to include a free KitKat (intact and please note that other chocolate/wafer snack bars are available) with every order for the following week. Genius!
The second (and the thing that really impressed me) was the way in which he defended the staff member whose partially consumed elevenses had ended up being shipped to a customer. The customer had obviously demanded some form of “head on a plate” gesture, but the CEO had refused. He knew that the staff member had obviously not meant to ship their snack out, and probably would much rather have finished it themselves.
In short, the dispute was resolved eventually without anyone losing their job over an isolated failure. One would hope that the customer concerned felt a little foolish having seen the story on LinkedIn, and the reactions to it.
I have long been interested in different attitudes to failure, and the effect they have not only on the individual(s) at the centre of the issue, but on the wider perceptions of their friends and colleagues and of organisations as a whole.
Coming from a background in aeronautical engineering, the need to report, investigate and share failures, faults, flaws and other “fubars” was drummed into everyone in that environment from day one. The mandatory reporting channels were augmented by anonymous methods, which helped to surface mistakes to which people might otherwise have been far too embarrassed to put their name. It was all about sharing the lessons for the greater good, and to save lives.
I had always known that it had taken significant effort to ensure that aviation fostered and maintained a healthy attitude to failure. But I honestly didn’t realise that this was not something that had happened in all industries until I read Matthew Syed’s book, Black Box Thinking. I’m not much of a reader but I finished the book in a few days. I was fascinated by the insights into perceptions of “failure” and the lengths that people will go to in order to avoid being associated with it, but also by how seemingly small incremental corrections can lead to greater successes.
How you respond to failure is just as important as correcting it. If people are afraid to report a failure, whether they were at fault or not, then they will be less likely to tell anyone about it. If you don’t know something has failed, it is that much more difficult to fix it. And often the longer it is left before the failure is discovered, the more likely it is that your people and processes will need to be diverted from business as usual to sort it out.
Imagine creating an environment where failures are accepted as a normal part of life, as an opportunity to learn and a way of improving (both professionally and personally). You might initially see a rise in your failure statistics. It is more likely though, that the number of “failures” you are experiencing hasn’t changed. You are just more aware of them because the fear of reporting them has been taken away.
Personally, I love it when someone sidles up to me and whispers
“Er..Michelle. I f****ed up!”
I never tire of seeing the look on their faces when I flash them a big smile and respond with “Fantastic! Pull up a seat and tell me all about it..!”
The other great thing about removing the fear of reporting is the earlier you detect the issue, the more likely it is that you can respond to it before it becomes a bigger problem. In this kind of environment, people are also more likely to offer suggestions which will prevent the issue from occurring in the first place.
But ultimately, we are all human. Well most of us are! This means that it is inevitable that we will all screw up at some point, despite our best intentions. The vast majority of employees do not go into work wondering how big a problem they can cause that day. If you remove the fear what might happen if you report a problem, people are more open about things which do go wrong and what can be done about them. And once a team has a much more honest relationship with its failures, they will work together to fix the things that have gone wrong, and take steps to prevent a future failure before it happens.
Like the CEO in the story that sparked this post, leaders need to accept that staff members are human and stand up for them when such failures occur. The root cause is unlikely to be the person and their intention. Look at the circumstances surrounding the issue. Did the team member have the chance to take a proper break, or had they simply “pushed through” to make sure an important order was despatched?
As the advert used to say “Have a break…”
