They say, " Success is a bastard with many fathers
and failure is an orphan with no takers", since every body wants
to be successful and are afraid to fail. However wise people
understand that success cannot be achieved without failures and
success is a continues effort even after series of failures. It is
this courage and conviction to pick up oneself and start over again
that sets the successful people apart. Does this mean that to learn
and be success one has to fail ? If so, then how many times one has
to fail to become successful? Well there are no straight answers nor
statistics to back these questions. On a lighter note people should
not commit the same mistakes multiple times to become geniuses. One
thing is clear that one has to learn from their mistakes or failures
and not repeat the same mistakes or failures again. But yes one need
not commit mistakes purposeful to learn but can learn from the
mistakes of others as well. So as entrepreneurs and business heads it becomes
important that not only success stories are read and emulated but
even case studies about failures are read so as to not repeat the
same mistakes. How can organizations adopt this?
Cultural Change
A culture of accepting mistakes or failures needs to be
built in Organizations and a database built for future references by
others. Businesses should not view mistakes or failures as a bane
but put systems and processes in place to get to root cause leading
to such mistakes or failures. This will ensure that people within the
organizations will not fear failures or mistakes but analyse the
mistakes and ensure that the same is not repeated. By building a
database of mistakes and lessons learned from them it will ensure
that the wheel is not reinvented and considerable time and effort
are saved by not repeating the same mistakes.
Leading by example
The
C.E.O. / Business Head should lead by example. He/she should accept
his/her mistakes or failures with the team members to set an example.
This will instill confidence within the team members and they will be
convinced that the top management is serious about the issue and is not into mere sloganeering. When exposed to the external world the C.E.O., should
have the courage to take the blame of failures on himself / herself
to shield the team from any criticism which may further lead to
demotivation. One of classic example is an incident narrated by our
former President late Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam about an interesting
incident that happened in 1979 during the SLV project by ISRO when he
was the Project Director of the mission and Prof. Satish Dhawan was
the Chairman of ISRO. The gist of the incident is, when the mission
failed during the first attempt Prof. Satish Dhawan took the blame
for the failure and the next time when the mission succeeded he gave
the credit to the entire team. Had he blamed the team when they had
failed, then the morale of the entire team would have gone down which in turn would have demotivated the team and hence success would have eluded
them.
Driving Innovation
The emphasis should be that failures are part of
learning so that people can innovate with out the fear of being
chastened or reprimanded. With a environment that fosters an open
culture that embraces mistakes and failures, employees will be inspired to take
risk and bring fresh perspective about products and services, thus
driving innovation at work. With the burden of being successful being
lifted, employees will be encouraged to experiment with new ideas
than trying to be safe using tried and tested methods. But how ever
it should be made clear that mistakes are encouraged but repeated
mistakes of the same nature will not be tolerated.
Public Relations
Having a culture of learning from your mistakes or
failures can also help build a great public relations with the
external customers of the organization. By admitting to mistakes
either through social media or traditional media and show casing that
the organization is ready to learn from these mistakes or failures
will create a positive brand image in the minds of the customer. Here
also the timing and the way the message is conveyed is very
important. A recent case being Maggi, the instant noodle brand. The
management was late in address the issue and hence a negative
image about the brand was created. Another case was that of coke
which immediately admitted and addressed the presence of pesticides
in their drink and assured the public of speedy redressal.
Conclusion
In conclusion organizations can benefit and be
successful by encouraging mistakes and failures at work. However anything “too much is too bad”, the organization should have clear
guidelines about how much or to what extend these mistakes or
failures will be tolerated. It should also ensure that it does not
give an indication that success is bad. It should have a fine balance
between success and failures.
