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Why Good Leaders Celebrate Failure

Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book by Eric Douglas for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 Quantum Leaps to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization. In the 6th chapter, Stimulate the Creative Flow, Mr. Douglas describes the notion of celebrating failure while traversing the difficult path to innovation.

Leaders should not only celebrate successes, but failures as well. Failures are inevitable on the path of innovation, and smart leaders know there’s much to be learned from failure. We worked with a company that made software applications for medium-sized companies. The company’s CEO, Tom, is an extremely social and communicable individual. “Yep, we nearly blew that one,” he would say in absolute candor to his employees. “Let’s get ‘em next time.”

Tom wanted his software development team to create a new product that would dramatically simplify the use of Java tools. Unfortunately, Tom had concerns that his team had become too self-satisfied and afraid of risk. “We don’t know how to do that,” one of his engineers grumbled when Tom announced the result he wanted. “That’s all right,” said Tom. “You’ll learn.”

Tom set up four teams inside the engineering department with four related tasks, and gave them a deadline. On the wall he put four color-coded charts with milestones and timescales – one for each team.

The deadline encouraged speedy progress. The teams worked like crazy. At the end of the deadline, the engineers asked Tom to join them in the conference room. “We’ve got good news and we’ve got bad news,” the engineering VP said.

Tom glanced up. “Tell me the good news first.”

“We’ve got a heck of a product,” said the department chief.

“What’s the bad news?” Tom questioned.

“It doesn’t do what it’s suppose to,” intoned the engineer.

Tom smiled. “Sounds great,” he intoned. “Tell me more about it.” The engineers described the product and outlined for Tom how it would work – eventually.

“Why couldn’t you make the deadline?” Tom asked.

“It was an unrealistic timeline,” stated several workers.

Smiling, Tom encouraged his team to continue trying. Four weeks later, the team came in with big grins on their faces. “Guess what?” they said. “It works much better than we imagined!”

Today, that product is the backbone of the company’s record profits.

People who fail while innovating should be made to feel welcome to try again – not scared to stick their necks out. That’s how you encourage creative flow.

Take this free work survey to see if your organization practices the 10 Quantum Leaps of high-performing organizations.

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