Journal Entry: Detecting Failure, Article Critique Example

Question: Detecting failure is difficult. Reporting failure may be even more difficult. According to these readings, how could we encourage the reporting of failure?

No one likes to be thought a failure; this strikes at a person’s self-awareness as a successful individual.  Organizations are subject to the same types of ego-based reluctance to admit failure as any individual (Brown & Starkey, 2000).  The issue thus isn’t whether admitting failure is difficult, nor even why it is difficult, but instead how do we make reporting failure less traumatic both for individuals and for organizations.  In many ways, the psychodynamics of individual learning processes are essentially similar to the psychodynamics of an organization’s learning processes (Brown & Starkey, 2000).

Learning is nearly always associated with mistakes.  If we can do something perfectly, we have not learned anything in the doing.  Only by recognizing mistakes and taking action to correct those mistakes in future does learning occur.  When mistakes are never acknowledge, organizations restrict their ability to learn (Brown & Starkey, 2000). Thus, an organization that cannot acknowledge failure is restrained in its ability to grow and learn in an ever-changing environment.

The mistakes made by organizations in suppressing failures are the counterpoint to the actions that should be taken to encourage failure-reporting, and thus, by implication, enabling organizational learning.  Managers, for example, often pay more attention to data that supports their theories than to data that indicates the theory may be failing (Wright, van Der Heijden, Bradfield, Burt, & Cairns, 2004). Not being willing to hear about failures is one indication that management policy is vulnerable to collapse.  Having a blame culture also suppresses members from reporting problems and failures, which equally makes learning less likely (Wright et al., 2004). Some other managerial attitudes that get in the way of reporting failures (and which thus need to be addressed in promoting failure reporting) include issues with procrastination; refusal to accept responsibility (it’s someone else’s fault or responsibility); so-called group-think in which everyone agrees with everyone else thus suppressing alternatives and failure reports  (Wright et al., 2004).

One technique for promoting the reporting of failures is to institute a policy of critical reflection on organizational projects and events.  If appropriately managed to promote “mature and adaptive thought and action” (Brown & Starkey, 2000, p. 103), failures can transform into opportunities for adaptation and progress. For this to happen, however, it is vital that the idea of critical thought not transform into personal criticism. Instead, the five most common sources of defensiveness need to be considered and strategies created to manage them appropriately so they are not barriers to learning and adapting; these are denial, rationalization, idealization, fantasy, and symbolization (Brown & Starkey, 2000).

Wright, et al. (2004) reports that one useful strategies that can help an organization move away from the refusal to accept failures include doing scenario-planning interventions in which organizational members plan for a variety of scenarios. By having such alternative plans in place, when failures or problems develop, there is little resistance to reporting that because everyone understands that such problems were a possibility—and that there are strategies in place to recover from such failures.  Such forward-thinking techniques reduce the stigma of reporting failure because  it then becomes simply a data point instead of an accusation.

Specific techniques for promoting a supportive learning environment (and thus not suppressing learning)  include providing a space of psychological safety where reporting failure is not a danger to the individual’s self-esteem (or job security!), appreciating differences of opinion instead of suppressing them, being open to new ideas; and providing explicit time for reflection (Garvin, Edmonson & Gino, 2008). Each of these encourages organizational members not only to report what works, but also what does not work.

It is vital that managers make specific efforts to promote learning—and even failures if they are productive ones—by inviting open discussion and by practicing active listening (Garvin et al., 2008), as well as using good management techniques such as providing resources and time to evaluate projects and by encouraging the type of mature critical reflection on past events that is essential to appropriate learning (Garvin et al., 2008).  The critical building blocks that allow organization members to report failures do not operate in isolation.  It is essential that providing a learning-friendly environment be matched with establishing formal processes to ensure evaluation and  assessment (good and bad) of projects be part of the organizational culture, as well as having management who model the learning behaviors desired—which includes reporting failures as well as successes (Garvin et al., 2008).  Clearly, this has to happen at all levels of an organization to encourage overall organizational adaptability.

In essence, to reduce the resistance to reporting failure it is important to construct an organization that is open to learning and adapting.  Failures then become an opportunity to progress rather than an indictment or an accusation. Some strategies that can help provide that learning-friendly environment include providing time and resources for ongoing critical reflection on organizational projects and events, doing scenario pre-planning, providing a space of psychological safety in which failure-reporting is allowed, appreciating and encouraging discussions of differences of opinion (and incorporating those differences in the scenario pre-planning exercises), being open to new opinions, and having leaders who model the desired behaviors.

References

Brown, A. D. & Starkey, K. (2000). Organizational identity and learning: A psychodynamic perspective. Academy of Management Review, 25 (1), 102-120.

Garvin, D. A., Edmondson, A. C. & Gino, F. (2008). Is yours a learning organization? Harvard Business Review,  March 2008, 109-116.

Wright, G., van Der Heijden, K., Bradfield, R., Burt, G., & Cairns, G. (2004). The psychology of why organizations can be slow to adapt and change. Journal of General Management,  29 (4), 21-36.