Mistakes are bound to happen, in IT as anywhere. Is it appropriate to fire someone for a mistake? Should we penalize someone for failure in an innovative venture? I would argue against it.
Such an atmosphere could be deadly for innovation within any organization, but more so in an IT organization. Organizations and IT leaders that do not tolerate mistakes -- or innovative failures -- are likely to stagnate. Fear of retribution will reduce productivity and creativity and may cause the most valuable and innovative employees to leave.
People who do nothing make no mistakes. People who do nothing have no failures. The more a person does, the more opportunities there are for that person to make a mistake. So in an organization we should never penalize for mistakes. What we should do is teach people to ensure that they take adequate precautions to recover from a mistake. A good example is making a backup of the system before making a change. Another example is discussing a high-risk action or plan with other qualified people before execution.
Risk management should be part of the standard operating procedure. If a person fails to follow this procedure, we may have an argument for consequences. It is important to ensure that people feel comfortable owning up to errors so that appropriate corrective action can be applied and people can learn how to avoid the mistake in the future.
Quality control reduces errors and mistakes. All members of a team should work toward an atmosphere where people help each other avoid errors and share lessons learned. We should never hide or gloss over bad events.
Innovative people will have some ideas and projects that will not succeed. The person who executes on 10 innovative ideas will most likely fail in a few. If you are going to fail, it is important to fail early and inexpensively. It is dangerous to continue implementing a bad idea for fear of organizational retribution.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Jamshed Irani, former CEO of Tata Steel, who turned around the company in the late 80s and early 90s by engaging the entire organization in a culture of innovation. One of the ideas that emerged during his tenure was Tata's practice of giving "Dare to Try" awards for innovative ideas that were operationally unsuccessful.
Failed ideas teach us what does not work and provide the opportunity to think critically so that the next idea has a better chance of success.
There is an inherent risk of failure in trying anything new. We should ensure that people within a team are free to speak their minds and constructively criticize any new idea -- even if the idea comes from the team leader. People closest to the leader are more likely to see the flaws in the idea -- they may even be more qualified to evaluate the risks of the idea appropriately.
After various perspectives have been provided and everyone has had an opportunity to punch holes in the idea, chances are very high that the final decision will be stronger, with more of the risks identified and appropriately addressed. People should not feel bad about saying something incorrect. Only people who say nothing are always correct. People who actively participate in discussions are bound to say something incorrect once in awhile. It is important to recognize and acknowledge that this is going to happen.
So let us set our people free to innovate, create, and debate; and let our organizations enjoy the wonderful rewards of such an atmosphere.
I think, if a person is allowed to "make mistakes", he or she still needs to have some responsibilities in case of failure otherwise, it can go crazy. I was coaching one IT company , the topic was effective communication. The reason, why owners decided to have ths workshop, was several real big mistakes their stuff did. They felt they could "try" everything, so when some clients behave not very nicely, the programmers were being very rude towards the clients and they almost lost couple of really large contracts. Independence and innovative approaches were always encouraged in this company but then, they just realized, it might be pretty expensive.A balance is really needed
I think that balance is also important. But failures are bound to happen, but proper strategic planning and quality control can help soften the blow of such failures if they occur. Rushing into anything and everything is when true failures and downfalls occur. But with proper planning, I think failure, while stinky, are still great learning experiences and can yield those huge successes.
You never know what will work until you try. I don't advise tackling huge projects without due diligence, but smaller ones can and should be tossed up frequently to see what works and what doesn't.
@nimanthe: Can't speak for Mansur here, of course, but my take is that projects that fail -- without causing enormous damage -- can teach IT a lot about what will actually work in an organization.
Case in point: Say you try a backup service for email. Turns out that half your users aren't able to log in. You cancel the service in favor of another one. A totally simplistic example.... Or say you try producing podcasts for customers. Turns out no one uses them. You stop producing them, realizing that your avenue to reach customers is online video.
The "trick" is to know when to risk and when to quit.
The fear of reprisals, the fear of not getting paid, fear of getting fired... all of these and more can be reasons to hang in long after a project has failed. And then you get a massive resource waste as seems to happen with the government from time to time.
I think you sum it up very nicely. It is not makming a committment to fail a corporate strategy but rather to loose from the grip of the fear of failure which has in many ways stifle the spirit of innovation in us.
Hi Mary, You made a a great point. In my project management class, there is a term used to describe our persistence tohold on to failed projects just because we want to prove that we are right in the first place. That has led to unnecessary waste of financial and human capital which will have otherwise been diverted to other projects that are working successful.
But asManur rightly pointed out, if wehave a corpoate culture like that of Tata's,people will be more inclined to call it 'quit' on many projects that have have visibly shown signs of failure.
I think Mansur is just drawing life's lessons fromthe popular adage that "FAILURE IS SUCCESS TURNS UPSIDE DOWN'.
It is not that we are setting initially to fail but the reality of life is that they do often occur even after we've put ina place rigorous risk management and quality control procedures. We've seen how the fear of faiure has paralyze many individuals and enterprises from undertaking risky projects.
The point Mansur is trying to drive home is that it's better to loose the spirit of innovation and make faillures in the process rather than to take the more conservative path of not undertaking worthwhile projects that carry some reassonsble risks of failure.
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