How to Discuss Failure—and Not Get Fired! Lessons from a 2011 Human Development Forum Session
Any organization can be good at discussing its successes and good practices. But can it be a truly effective agent for learning and change if success is all it discusses? Doesn't continual learning require being open about mistakes having the...
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2011/08/15257571/discuss-failure-not-fired-lessons-2011-human-development-forum-session http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10437 |
| Summary: | Any organization can be good at
discussing its successes and good practices. But can it be a
truly effective agent for learning and change if success is
all it discusses? Doesn't continual learning require
being open about mistakes having the courage to talk about
them so they can be corrected and not repeated? An
organization can be more effective if its staff takes
individual responsibility for creating a culture in which
risk taking is not only tolerated but also encouraged, and
failure is openly discussed. Some experts ascribe about 80
percent of the barriers to an organization's success to
issues associated with organizational culture the way it
does business, including how it learns from its mistakes and
failures. Organizations that openly discuss mistakes and
shortcomings tend to get better, become more innovative, and
have greater impact. The 2011 Human Development Forum
featured a FAILFaire type session, 'how learning from
failure can make project success more likely.' This
smart lesson grew out of staff requests for follow-up
information from that session. |
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