FAILURE FOSTERS INNOVATION

The discomfort: Most people have been brought up to believe failure is something to avoid at all costs. The result is a culture with a deep-rooted fear of fucking up. But ‘failure anxiety’ is the death knell of success, because by fearing the discomfort of bombing out, you miss vital opportunities to grow.

The evidence: The car company Toyota operates what it calls the Toyota Production System. It’s so successful, it’s now employed across the world. Its guiding tenet? Failure. Here’s how it works: when a worker spots a flaw or mistake on the production line, they pull a cord to halt production. If the problem can’t be fixed in under a minute, then the entire production is stopped until the issue can be fixed. This constant assessment of even the smallest failure means the company makes lots of small incremental improvements.

The plan: There are two types of failure. Failure that stems from carelessness or laziness is the bad kind; but failure that comes about by taking bold risks on the frontier of innovation is to be encouraged. Fail early and fail intelligently. In other words, the minute something goes wrong, stop and analyse it. Ask yourself ‘why’ several times until you have dissected the issue at hand. Why did this happen? What could have been done differently? What can you do to stop it happening again? Take the blame out of failure and you’ll begin to see it as an opportunity to obtain a piece of information that no one else will have.