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Rita McGrath

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May 22, 2016

Failing By Design

Most organizations suffer from a pervasive anti-failure bias.  When things don’t work out as planned, those seen as responsible are branded as having failed.  Here’s the problem: in fundamentally unpredictable environments, it is a fool’s game to make bold predictions, because you simply don’t have the information you need.  Getting the information when you really don’t know requires some kind of experimentation.  Some experiments don’t work out, but that doesn’t mean they failed.  It simply means that particular path forward isn’t going to work.  Failure is essential if your organization is to take the controlled risks to engage in the innovations crucial to effective competition. To gain these benefits, follow six principles: 1) Plan to convert assumptions to knowledge; 2) be quick about it; 3) contain the downside risk; 4) make sure uncertainty is genuine, but not overwhelming; 5) intelligent failures are celebrated; and 6) learning is codified and transferred.

You will learn:

  • How being tolerant of failure can expand the range of possibilities an organization is willing to try
  • How failure can help you attract resources and attention
  • Why failure and intuition are inextricably linked
  • How failure helps you learn what doesn’t work so that you can focus on learning what does
  • How to make the distinction between bad management and bad luck
  • How to write a contract for intelligent failure
  • How failure can accelerate organizational learning

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Rita McGrath Group
P.O. Box 7286
Princeton, NJ 08543

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