Transparency and Ownership are keys to any organization learning and thriving. In spite of any and all efforts to develop a culture of accountability and responsibility, every organization is surrounded by a sea of blame and shame, polluting and counteracting their best efforts. Smart organizations double down on their efforts: owning outcomes, documenting, sharing, and operationalizing insights, harvesting the learning. The goal is always to cap the downside: small, early, frequent losses learned from and built upon vs. rare, catastrophic ones.

Dumb failure is repeating the same mistake, real failure is failing to learn from your failure. Blame suppresses learning; transparency accelerates it. Acceptance of the inevitability of a certain level of failure is not laxness; it is both reality and a perquisite for advancing into the unknown.

Failure is data rich: it surfaces weak assumptions, hidden constraints, and false correlations. Small, early failures compress learning cycles and can reduce overall risk and frame it as ‘buying clarity, purchasing information’. Intolerance of failure traps you at your current knowledge level, running small; bounded risks is a form of exploration.

Wisdom is best found rather in the instruction gained from deep analysis of our own errors. We deepen our pattern recognition skills, having walked the valley, we become inoculated against stress of the next valley, stronger and better for having survived: Failure is the tuition life collects for gaining good judgment.

Closing Quotes:

“We are all failures – at least the best of us are.” – J.M. Barrie

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has tried.” – Stephen McCranie

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford

“When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” – Eloise Ristad

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier

Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832