Thursday, November 27, 1997

In business, nothing succeeds like failure

By MIDGE GILLES / The Guardian

Everyone knows that the only way to deal with failure is to learn from it. But new research suggests that trying to make sense out of failure can often prove counter-productive.

Few managers are trained in the right way to deal with failure. The notion that it is acceptable -- even praiseworthy -- to fail is still fairly new.

Research by David Cannon of the London Business School has found that the memory of a failure can leave deep psychological scars, and he suggests that in some cases it might be better simply to forget it.

In a series of interviews conducted for his research, remembered failures ranged from an electrician whose mistake caused a delay in a contract to a pilot who damaged a 747 airliner in a crash landing. Even failures that seem minor to the outsider left vivid memories that lasted for years.

One of the conclusions drawn by Cannon and his colleague, Nigel Nicholson, in their paper, "Making Sense Of Failure," is that: "Balanced feedback does not work. The oar of negative feedback has disproportionate weight, threatening to steer one in circles."

Cannon also suggests that asking workers to come clean about mistakes can seem too risky in industries which have suffered major redundancies, and in a culture where failure is still a taboo.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates may have said that senior managers should experience some sort of setback as proof that they can handle change, but Britain is among countries where it is still unusual for top managers to flaunt past mistakes.

Peter Cochrane, head of British Telecom Laboratories, believes that attitudes will only change when the people at the top of companies admit that they are not infallible. He believes that other industries can learn something from the scientist's approach.

"For a scientist, finding out that something doesn't work is a positive thing because it closes off several avenues of inquiry and allows you to concentrate on something else," he says. He believes that a culture that is afraid to make mistakes will find it difficult to innovate. Within his own team, success and failures are evaluated daily and failures are seen as part of a normal working day.

Cannon says that other disciplines also have better "support systems." When a sports team fails to win a game, they have a well-tried routine to fall back on that includes a coach's assessment and team debriefing sessions. Sales teams use humor to take the sting out of failure and some entrepreneurs use tales of earlier failures to win kudos.

Tim Payne, executive consultant in human resources at KPMG, believes that managers need to be given better training so that people are allowed to discover their shortcomings themselves.

"There is still an element of 'blame culture' in Britain," he says. "Good managers should try to get the person to assess their own performance in a way that will facilitate discussion."

Frances Cook, managing director of career consultants Sanders & Sidney, agrees that the traditional annual review often backfires. "One of the problems with appraisals is that a manager might save up all their grievances about a person for one session in December, so that the person is left trying to defend something that happened in June."

She prefers the "360-degree performance evaluation," in which the person being assessed gathers feedback from a range of people -- such as their secretary; their boss and the partner at home -- and looks for a pattern. This might, for example, allow them to recognize that while they can communicate well with their superior, they are not so good at talking to clients.

Successful feedback has to be couched in the right terms. Some 20 years later, Cook still remembers vividly being told at the end of a largely complimentary assessment that her youthful appearance meant she was not being taken seriously and that she should change her hairstyle. She had her hair cut but is still piqued at the way the advice was delivered.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)