Failure culture and the internet

I saw quite a number of posts and comments over the last days concerned with „failure culture“ or its absence in organizations. Mostly an example was given, followed by admonishments to embrace failure as the fastest way forward.

One thing is clear. Any culture that does not allow and even demand a certain kind of failures or mistakes will likely neither be a great place to work in nor particularly successful in the long run.

Quite on purpose there is a restricting „certain kind of“ included in the last sentence. This is where things get messy. 

In particular when talking and thinking about law firms, which (like most professional service firms) tend to have a harder time coming to grips with the question what „failure culture“ or a similar concept might look like in their context.

A very plain and minimalistic scenario can help.
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A mistake was made within an organization. 
People reacted to it in a certain way.
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No matter what the actual details look like – it is important to be very clear that based on this set of inputs we cannot say anything worthwhile about what happened.

Not about the mistake.
Not about the reactions. 
Not about the organization and its culture.

Maybe the mistake is totally inconsequential. Sometimes even severe mistakes are made and everything works out fine.

Maybe the mistake has horrible consequences. The final launch of the space shuttle Challenger failed catastrophically and seven people died, all because of known problems with tiny O-rings in low temperatures (and it was cold on launch day). 

Maybe a person with a career-long track record of being reliable and conscientious has a terrible day and for just once makes a mistake. 

Maybe an individual has been counseled, coached, coaxed, helped, trained, admonished and advised multiple times over the last months regarding the need for attention to detail regarding this particular task…and just doesn’t care.

Each of these (and many other) „maybes“ will have decisive influence on any reasonable and practical view on the mistake made, the reactions that occurred and what all that might (or might not) say about the organization and its culture.

Details matter.
Nuance matters.
Even if much harder to display and digest on the internet. 

If we really want to move things forward, it might be worth investing some time to get things both right and relevant. Otherwise, even helpful thoughts will be much too easy to dismiss.