Every leader loves it when their team performance is humming along nicely.
But, if this is always the case, you may be losing out on a great learning opportunity through “productive failure.”
There are many goals that you really do not want a person or team to fail at – such as processing payroll on time or submitting a required report to a government agency. And many of these goals are binary – you either get them done or not.
Other goals, however, have a performance range. How big is our profit margin? What are our quarterly sales numbers? What is our Net Promoter Score?
Let’s say that you have been working hard on Net Promoter Score (customer loyalty) and your numbers are pretty good – but it would be great to get them higher. Here is how you can use “productive failure” to learn and grow.
1. Challenge Your Team to Set a Hard Goal. Inspire your team to reach even higher and explain the payoffs for the team and the organization.
2. Assure Them that Learning and Creativity are Paramount. While achieving the goal is important, explain that the main thing is to try new ideas that you can learn from.
3. Create a Safe-Fail Zone. Tell the team – and keep reinforcing this – that this is a “safe-fail” zone in which they are empowered to try new ideas, even if they do not work 100%.
4. Design and Implement New Ideas. Enthusiastically implement your new plan and be sure to document the new process.
5. Don’t Freak over Failure. If you set the goal high enough, then it is likely your team failed. You can acknowledge this – but remind the team that they had tried new, creative ideas – which was the main point. This step is crucial, or your team may never try anything new again.
6. Conduct an After Action Review. With a focus on learning, review everything the team did and what you can do better the next time. Celebrate the learning! Check here for more on After Action Reviews.
Continuous improvement and growth is a serious competitive advantage in today’s fast-paced work environment. Use “productive failure” to keep your team improving their Mission Impact.
*Ideas for this blog taken from: Morris, S. “To Help Your Team Learn, Set Them Up for Productive Failure,” Harvard Business Review online, November 6, 2024.
