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Scoop.it!
Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels, discusses leadership, his bad first job, and the best business book he's ever read. 
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Scoop.it!
A new way of looking at failure and its important role in determining our success
Scoop.it!
As a business leader, I found that one of the scariest things to do was to give your people the freedom to make mistakes. While mistakes allow individuals to learn and grow, they can also be very costly to any company.
Beth Kanter's insight:
We all make mistakes. Every one of us. If we aren’t making mistakes, then we likely aren’t trying enough new things outside our comfort zone, and that itself is a mistake. That process is the best way to learn and grow as a person. As John Wooden once said, “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.” Mistakes are the pathway to great ideas and innovation. Mistakes are the stepping stones to moving outside the comfort zone to the growing zone where new discoveries are made and great lessons are learned. Mistakes are not failures, they are simply the process of eliminating ways that won’t work in order to come closer to the ways that will. Great leaders allow their people the freedom to make mistakes. But good employees are those who when mistakes are made 1. Learn from them, 2. Own them, 3. Fix them, and 4. Put safeguards in place to ensure the same mistake will never be repeated again.
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Beth Kanter's insight:
Some failure humor from Deborah Elizabeth Finn.
Scoop.it!
To innovate, stop worrying about "failure" and start thinking of "learning."
Tess Sorensen's curator insight,
May 13, 2013 4:25 PM
"I've since learned that anyone who has a sense of humor is creative." This is an important thing to remember. Perhaps the idea of creativity seems so above, so lofty and special, that there are times when it is hard to recognize the creativity within oneself. Especially after years and years of creativity being not encouraged and even squashed through formal education that looks more to recitation of material than actual learning. 
IncitED's curator insight,
July 12, 2013 9:38 PM
Yes. This is powerful. I find many students are afraid of being wrong or of failing; too much energy is spent on this anxiety. . . .
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Beth Kanter's insight:
"Making a mistake is not a fault of character, not being able to forgive others for their mistakes is a big one!"
Scoop.it!
We often talk about the value of failure but what does it mean to create an organizational culture that embraces it? Rachel Jansen, Writer, and Ashley Good, CEO and Founder of Fail Forward, a proje...
Beth Kanter's insight:
Rachel Jansen, Writer, and Ashley Good, CEO and Founder of Fail Forward, a project of Engineers Without Borders Canada, talk about how to move past the fear of failing.
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March 14th, 2013 // KANEKO // National keynote speaker Marcus Nelson shares his experiences with failure and redemption in the first event of KANEKO’s new ser
Beth Kanter's insight:
Some good practical tips about failing informatively. Inspiring
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So who do you think form the group that are the most likely candidates for innovations consistent failure?
Beth Kanter's insight:
This is from a survey http://www.15inno.com/2012/11/22/failurelearnmore/ for a book about learning from failure. The Top Ten Reasons for Failure 1) unrealistic expectations from top management regarding resources and the time really required in achieving innovation 2) the lack of resources allocated in budget, people, infrastructure 3) far too much focus on products and technology and ignoring the other options within innovation, such as service, business model, platform collaborations etc. 4) that people or teams operate in silo’s instead of broader collaborative approaches 5) the wrong personnel are in place to make innovation happen 6) that classic of classics, a poorly defined innovation strategy and the goals to achieve this. 7) a lack of innovation strategy 8) the emphasis is placed in far too much on idea generation and not on execution, 9) a lack of involving external partners and lastly 10) poor management of the innovation process.
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"What's gone and what's past help Should be past grief." William Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale We give abundant advice to founders about how to make startups succeed yet we offer few models about...
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Great comedians make their living by seeing the world in a fresh way and creating high-value product to match. Could your team learn from that?
Beth Kanter's insight:
This article offers advice for creativity in business from five well-known comedians. The bottom line is that creativity has to be nurtured and that it thrives in an atmosphere where it is welcome. Leaders set the tone. The message is to the organization's leadership. "If you’re willing to give others the opportunity to play, explore, fail, throw out ideas, think about the mundane, take their time--and sometimes break the ice by telling a bad joke--then you will create an atmosphere that will stimulate new ideas, new processes, and new directions and take your company to new heights. No kidding."
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Five insights from results-oriented philanthropists on how to reap the benefits of failure.
Beth Kanter's insight:
The philanthropic sector seems to be changing its tune about failure. While some, like former Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest, have been encouraging philanthropists to talk about their failures (of grants, initiatives, or entire strategies) for years, only more recently has the sector more widely adopted the view that failure can be something positive—an indicator of a willingness to take risks, experiment, and adapt. A number of recent initiatives demonstrate this new outlook: the Case Foundation’s Be Fearless campaign, the Institute of Brilliant Failures Award for Best Learning Moment in international development, the Admitting Failure online community, and the FailFare conferences. All of these have launched in just the last three years. While failure can be an incredibly valuable learning tool, research from the private sector suggests that most organizations don’t take a systematic approach to experimentation, and therefore don’t reap the benefits of failure. In 2011, Bridgespan began a series of blogs based on a decade of close client work with philanthropists called “Does Your Philanthropy Have an Adaptive Strategy?” These blogs chronicled an emerging redefinition of strategy from a static towards a more flexible view of what constitutes success, and a greater willingness to prototype ideas, learn from mistakes, and adapt in light of new information and opportunities. A video series of candid conversations with more than 60 philanthropists, recently released by Bridgespan, echoes this approach and provides five insights into how to diagnose, learn from, and improve after failures.
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Beth Kanter's insight:
Here's another process to look at failure - it is called "Church of Failure" where they gather a group of people who share and celebrate failure. it’s a common theme in business writing: “if you want to succeed double your failure-rate”. That’s my favourite, from Thomas J Watson, Sr., long-serving president of IBM. But everyone from Abe Lincoln to Colonel Sanders apparently loved to fail, and learn from their failures.
Valli Swerdlow, MSW, Career Coach expert's curator insight,
May 4, 2013 9:16 AM
I am LD and can't tell you how many times a day I misspell words even with a spell checker. I can spend hours going over one email. I can't afford to hire someone to look over every email I send. It is frustrating but I keep going and hope that my colleagues and clients who know about my situation, because I am open about it, will give me the slack I need.
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How organizations can make mistakes productive and fun.
Beth Kanter's insight:
My first post on the HBR Blog is about failure
Ken Morrison's comment,
April 17, 2013 11:43 PM
Congratulations. I was at a big conference by a large global company recently. They shared a concept very similar to this. Thank you for sharing on Scoop.it and congrats on your HBR publication! Ken
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They're a reminder that mastery, membership, and meaning are the best motivators.
Beth Kanter's insight:
Motivation is an important aspect to look at: In research for my book Evolve!, I identified three primary sources of motivation in high-innovation companies: mastery, membership, and meaning. Another M, money, turned out to be a distant fourth. Money acted as a scorecard, but it did not get people up-and-at 'em for the daily work, nor did it help people go home every day with a feeling of fulfillment. People can be inspired to meet stretch goals and tackle impossible challenges if they care about the outcome. I'll never forget the story of how a new general manager of the Daimler Benz operations in South Africa raised productivity and quality at the end of the apartheid era by giving the workers something to do that they valued: make a car for Nelson Mandela, just released from prison. A plant plagued by lost days, sluggish workers, and high rates of defects produced the car in record time with close to zero defects. The pride in giving Mandela the Mercedes, plus the feeling of achievement, helped the workers maintain a new level of performance. People stuck in boring, rote jobs will spring into action for causes they care about. Heart-wrenching emotion also helps cultivate a human connection. It is hard to feel alone, or to whine about small things, when faced with really big matters of deprivation, poverty, and life or death. Social bonds and a feeling of membership augment the meaning that comes from values-based work.
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I hate failing. Failure feels like wasted life. Yes, I know I’m supposed to embrace failure and learn. But, given the choice, I’d succeed more! I haven’t failed for lack of good intentions.
Parent Cortical Mass's curator insight,
April 8, 2013 10:04 AM
Ways to think about failure as you deliberately practice your way to success.
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Beth Kanter's insight:
Useful article from LIfeHack via Christine Johns
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Mistakes happen, but you can bounce back! Check out some recovery tips for your association's setbacks.
Beth Kanter's insight:
Curated list of dealing with failure blog post from nonprofit folks.
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GiveWell finds outstanding charities and publishes the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give.
Beth Kanter's insight:
This is an interesting idea - a page on your web site sharing your "mistakes" how many folks would do this?
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Beth Kanter's insight:
Data nerd conversation about too much data vs too little.
vs wishing they had collected a data point.
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Give employees the freedom to fail, GE's John Rice tells The Wall Street Journal's Unleashing Innovation conference in Singapore.
Beth Kanter's insight:
So you have to create a culture where [failure] is OK. You have to protect people who fail for the right reasons. If you fail because of some external event that you couldn't control, if your logic was right, if your execution was good and you fail for some reason that couldn't have been foreseen, I think that could be a reasonable reason for failure.
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Surely someone's told you to 'embrace failure' before. Here's what that means, actually, and how to do it.
Beth Kanter's insight:
Some practical steps for embracing failure that get it taking the stigma away from ourselves. The normal reaction to "failure" is to stop completely.
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The Microsoft Unlimited Potential Blog tells the stories of Microsoft's Citizenship, corporate social responsibility and community efforts to help provide access to technology, strengthen economies, address societal challenges.
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What do you consider your biggest failure?
I like to consider failures “noble experiments.” For me it was Costanoa, a luxury campground between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz in California. It was an inspired idea but the execution was challenging and the location was challenging. We sold it after three years for a fraction of what we spent to build it. We did learn unique ways to deliver service in a remote location.