Why failure is bad

When life knocks you back and you struggle on anyway and get back on your feet, the success which comes after will feel even more incredible. Resilience will get you ahead in life, and the success you earn off the back of your hard work will taste all the sweeter for your trouble. And finally, just in case all of the above isn't enough to make you think a bit differently, here's Will Smith's view on failure:.

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Apply Now. Jamer Hunt of Fast Company described a failure spectrum that outlines six different types of failure. Abject failure , for example, is not the kind of failure that leads to innovation. Quite the opposite, this is the deep, dark failure of lost jobs, lives and livelihoods.

Moving along the spectrum, version failure involves little failures that lead to gradual but significant improvements over time. And predicted failure occurs when failure is a necessary step in the design process that clarifies the right way forward. These two types of failure can lead to remarkable innovation and invention. Edmondson described a different spectrum for organizational failures from blameworthy to praiseworth:. Lack of Ability: an individual doesn't have the skills, conditions, or training to execute a job.

Process Inadequacy: a competent individual adheres to a prescribed but faulty or incomplete process. Task Challenge: An individual faces a task too difficult to be executed reliably every time. Process Complexity: a process composed of many elements breaks down when it encounters novel interactions.

Uncertainty: a lack of clarity about future events causes people to take seemingly reasonable actions that produce undesired results. Hypothesis Testing: an experiment conducted to prove that an idea or a design will succeed fails.

Exploratory Testing: an experiment conducted to expand knowledge and investigate a possibility leads to an undesired result. Failure can be a useful tool that gives us the perspective to try new approaches and see what works. As our hero Ken Robinson said:. In the future of work , innovation will be a top priority.

Automation will change how we work in the future. The cult of failure in Silicon Valley is misleading. People celebrate everything from failing early to failing quickly to failing cheaply to failing forward — whatever that means. Or, as billionaire entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel likes to say…. Yes, the increased risk tolerance that the pro-failure mindset creates is both refreshing and commendable. But repeated failures need to be followed up with the proper reflection and corrective action.

Otherwise those failures generate intolerable risk and waste inside the organization. Failure is a part of repeatedly taking risks. When we try and fail, then, the goal is to learn as much as possible so similar mistakes are never made again.

Then take another risk, but plan to succeed this time! All three elements are needed for a successful project.

If any are missing, then new product initiatives will fail. When building a successful product your team needs to ask three questions:. When a project fails due to a lack of viability we call it a Good Idea. The project sounds good on paper — people want it and the technology is definitely there to deliver — but for some reason it can never get off the ground.

Many projects that experience cost overruns and delays start out as good projects. Everything appears to be going well. But then things go off the rails and you quickly find yourself throwing money and resources down a bottomless pit.