Jim, while I do write for myself, the blog would be a failure if no one read it. Thankfully, many people do.

Jason, great point. I think your track record is only as good as your last event, so the more you learn, the better FUTURE events will be.

I believe it’s our perception of failure that inhibits trailblazing activity.

The recruitment industry is a classic example of viewing one’s entire career as black and white (success or failure). But then again, I’ve never read a resume that accents failure and the lessons learned from it. Hiring teams waste an inordinate amount of time trying to check the success or failure box.

We like things packaged well. The tough sell are the shades of gray. Would you admit to a prospective employer that you spend more time trying to get it right than doing it right?

Blogging is another example. Jamie inspires critical thinking in his blog more than most. But if people weren’t reading it, would he be a failure (black)? If they were, he succeeds (white). But thinking in shades of gray, the only way for the blog to be a complete failure was that not a single person ever read it.

My first reply mentioned humility. I see humility as the trail away from the black. But the hardest lesson lies in our being grateful for the opportunity to fail.

That is where to me Gordon Moore’s quote is not quite on the money, as it implies failure is necessary for success. As per your comment above, I think people need to “learn” in order to succeed, and keep learning to keep succeeding.

Jim, “I need help” is right up there as top leadership words along with “I don’t know” and “it’s my fault.”

Dragan, I would argue that Plan, Do, Fail, Learn isn’t any different from PDCA. PDCA is only necessary because failures happen, and when effective, learning from both success and failure occurs.

Rick, I think humility is key, and supports Jim’s point about “I need help”. You can’t ask for help without practicing humility.

I do want to emphasize an important point. We should NOT celebrate failure. Failure is still bad. We should celebrate the LEARNING that comes from failure, when practiced properly.

Your post made me think of Steven Spear’s 2005 HBR article, Fixing Health Care from the Inside, in which he articulated four basic organizational capabilities of a Lean health care organization that desires to deliver Toyota-like operational excellence. They are:

1) Work is designed as a series of ongoing experiments that immediately reveal (think Visual Management)
2) Problems are addressed immediately through rapid experimentation (Kaizen)
3) Solutions are disseminated adaptively through collaborative experimentation (Standard Work)
4) People at all levels of the organization are taught to become experimentalists (Culture)

Mark R Hamel
http://www.gembatales.com

One of my biggest realizations with regards to “safety first” has been exactly what Jamie is pointing out, namely that a leader must create a safe environment professionally and emotionally, and this means allowing intelligent failures.

I had a very related post today about a talk by Eric Ries, about “lean startups” where he made a very similar point. You don’t punish a mistake – you detect it quickly, fix it, and learn from it. You don’t want to be repeating the same mistakes over and over — that’s a problem if you’re not learning.

http://www.leanblog.org/2010/01/notes-on-a-talk-by-eric-ries-on-lean-startups/

I don’t remember the reference, but it was written that Toyota is successful because they fail so often. Whereas GM was a company where nothing ever failed… except for the whole company. You can spend your time detecting and fixing the root cause of problems or you can spend time playing politics and rationalizing decisions you’ve already made. We know which works better.