Freedom to Fail

For most of us mortals, failure is a part of life. We don't always perform as well as we would like and we don't always get it right the first time. In fact, "fail fast, fail often" is an oft-heard mantra in startup culture.

Giving people the freedom to fail is important in an organization. By that, I mean that it should not be the end of the world if someone tries an idea that doesn't work out as intended. It's nice to cultivate "a culture of success," but if failure is deemed unacceptable, people will soon learn that it is not in their best interest to innovate or to try anything that might have an unpredictable outcome -- they will continue to do things how they have always done them for fear of retribution.

The same is true for staff development. Many organizations talk about the importance of lifelong learning but may not create the conditions for growth. Embracing that idea fully means allowing people to put into practice those things which they have not yet mastered. If Alice is the expert and Bob is just learning, it will always be more efficient (in the short term) to have Alice do the work -- Bob will take longer and probably won't be able to match the quality of work that Alice would produce. But if Bob is never given a chance to try (and possibly fail), Alice's availability will always be the bottleneck for any process that requires her expertise.

That said, minimizing the potential negative impact of failure is also important (e.g., don't start with projects that have high visibility or tight deadlines). A friend who is in charge of a university English language program said that she would plan on spending more time reviewing work done by more junior instructors, start the process earlier than she would with more seasoned teachers, and make sure to set deadlines early enough to allow for rework if needed.

If people are not given the freedom to fail, you have not eliminated failure, just made it invisible. You may not realize that the failure to try new things has led to organizational atrophy or that the failure to develop staff competence will lead to chaos when the expert quits.