Failure Again

Not all failures are the same

“You must understand your mistakes. Study the hell out of them. You’re not going to have the chance of making the same mistake again,  you can’t step into the river again at the same place and the same time,  but you will have the chance of making a similar mistake.”

– Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel Corporation

We all fail. Some of us learn right away from those failures and some of us need to continue to fail until we finally learn. The other day I was frustrated by how a meeting went. I didn’t think the presenters were prepared. We didn’t get to any decisions and generally they felt like a waste of time. My first thought was to blame the folks that participated in the meetings. A couple of days later my direct reports and I were discussing these meetings and someone pointed out that perhaps I had not given enough direction. They were spot on. I had not given enough guidance to the team. I did not appoint someone to run the meeting. I didn’t set any expectations of how they would proceed, topics that I would like to cover, etc. I’m not even sure if everyone knew the purpose of the meetings. Thankfully, this leadership failure was an easy one to fix. While you would think after attending maybe tens of thousands of meetings this stuff wouldn’t happen but it does. We all get busy, lose focus, and forget the basics. Sometimes we have to relearn lessons.

This got me thinking about failure and the notion of learning from failure. Some of us fail and fail to learn anything from it. Some of us fail and learn something but eventually forget the lessons and have to relearn them. This is what I did with regard to meetings. Some of us fail, learn something from it, and build upon that so they never have to learn that lesson again. I think we’d all like all aspects of our lives to be this last case, learn from our failures and build upon them.

Scenario #1: Fail -> Fail -> Fail -> Fail

Scenario #2: Fail -> Learn -> Forget -> Fail

Scenario #3: Fail -> Learn -> Build

Tipping Point for Learning

As I was thinking about failure, a friend of mine shared a study out of the Kellogg School of Management by Yian Yin and colleagues. Their research published in the journal Nature, questioned why some folks seem to learn from their mistakes to ultimately succeed, while others never manage to get past their failures? They studied large-scale data from three disparate domains indicating that their findings are broadly applicable. What they found was that it’s not simply that those who learn more as they go have better odds of victory. Rather, there’s a critical tipping point. If your ability to build on your earlier attempts is above a certain threshold, you’ll likely succeed in the end. But if it’s even a hair below that threshold, you may be doomed to keep churning out failure after failure forever. How do we foster an environment where we can learn above that critical tipping point?

The ability to learn or not learn from failures is influenced by multiple factors, not the least of which are within the individual such as one’s perceived ability, their ego, and if they posses any narcissistic traits. Research on cardiothoracic surgeons showed an inverted-U-shaped relationship between accumulated failures and learning. Initially, performance improved with failures, but after a certain point, learning decreases. This threshold is higher for those with a greater perceived ability to learn, such as those with elite training or specialization. Studies indicate that failure feedback can undermine learning due to ego threats, causing individuals to tune out. However, learning from others' failures is as effective as learning from others' successes, suggesting that ego concerns play a significant role in personal learning from failure. Another study found that a narcissistic personality can create cognitive and motivational obstacles to learning. This is especially true when social costs are high, such as when peers or a supervisor is present. These findings and many, many more underscore the importance of fostering a growth mindset and creating environments where failures are seen as opportunities for development rather than as limits to potential.

All of this indicates to me the importance of psychological safety. If we return to the study on the tipping point of learning from failure, they did not mention psychological safety. However, the researchers created a one-parameter model, which is a conceptual model that uses a single adjustable parameter to describe and predict outcomes based on a particular process. In the context of this study, the dynamics of failure and success were governed by one key factor or variable that influences the progression or stagnation of attempts. These models are great for their simplicity, in that focusing on one key parameter, it captures the essential features of how people build on past efforts and reach either success or failure. However, the study didn’t take into account confounding variables, interaction effects, and other explanatory factors. Human dynamics, learning, and failure processes are complex. While the results are interesting, the oversimplification and the inability to account for interactions and non-linear effects can lead to incomplete conclusions. I would argue that a huge confounding variable is psychological safety.

I’ve written a number of times about the importance of psychological safety but we’ve not explored some of the mechanisms that can help achieve this and thus increase the probability that team members learn past the tipping point from failures. Let’s dive into this topic.

Company Culture and Leadership are Local

To start with I’m reminded of the saying that “all politics are local.” Bear with me, I promise this article isn’t getting political. In the same way that the most important motivations directing voters are rooted in local concerns, the same is true for team members. While the company brand and its history, key executives and their history, all contribute to why people might consider joining a company, once they are employees by far the majority of their experience is dictated by their manager. The culture and leadership that individuals experience come from the manager that they interact with on a daily basis.

Research has shown time and time again the importance of team psychological safety on learning and performance in organizational work teams. In fact, the dimensions of relationships between team members such as shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, foster psychological safety and thus enable organizational members to engage in learning from failures. Psychological safety mediates the link between high-quality relationships and learning from failures in organizations. This means that high-quality relationships are important but only foster learning because of psychological safety amongst the team members. And, we know that leaders play a pivotal role in establishing psychological safety. By modeling openness and encouraging dialogue, leaders can create an environment conducive to learning from failures.

Conclusion

Failure is not only inevitable but desirable if we can learn from it. The ability to learn from failure isn’t uniform as it depends on individual traits, psychological safety, and leadership at the local level. The research highlights that organizations must foster environments where learning surpasses the critical tipping point. This starts with leaders who model vulnerability, openness, and accountability, setting the tone for constructive reflection rather than blame.

Ultimately, culture and leadership are local. This requires all leaders to make learning a shared priority and establish trust at the local level. Psychological safety is the linchpin, encouraging team members to share ideas, admit missteps, and seek feedback without fear. By understanding the nuances of failure and prioritizing learning, organizations can transform setbacks into valuable stepping stones toward sustained success and pass the tipping point of learning from failures.