Failure, Risk, and Innovation in the Workplace: Learning Meets Doing
“Any project that ends in successful innovation goes through multiple failures along the way because innovation occurs in the new territory where a compelling solution is yet to be developed.” (Edmondson, 2023, p 80)”
One of the main reasons the work of John Sullivan Solutions continues to emerge is because of our commitment to workplace ambidexterity - the left hand and right hand of learning and doing. Our academies are full of learners, teachers, researchers, problem solvers, and ideation wizards, and for them we grow daily in appreciation of what is gleaned from the deep thinking, intersecting of ideas, and analytical frameworks that help us make sense of ourselves and organizations. Equally, our business, education, and nonprofit workforces are championed by leaders who focus their best time and attention on providing, doing, growing, helping, and serving. You are leader-practitioners, and for you, we are deeply grateful. Because of you, our children have first-class educations, our society is constantly improving, and solutions are being initiated for those issues that are real, tangible and impossibly problematic.
At JSS, it is our goal to be a constant surgical suture bringing the two together: learner and practitioner (or really informed CEO, Head of School, Executive Director, Board Member, or Committee Chair). We believe that the gulf between our academies/research institutions and applied workforces should be small, getting smaller, and (ideally) overlapping. This is why Case Studies and Field Research are so important. This is why Professional Development and CEU’s are critical to the licensed teacher, counselor, city planner, and other professional practitioners. Field Research and Professional Development are great examples of actively enhancing the learning/doing ambidexterity. Our writings, professional development, and consulting engagements are meant to do that very thing - blur the line (if there even is one) between the research and the practice.
And to start 2024, we cannot imagine a more integral topic than failure, risk, and innovation in the workplace. No, not three topics. One topic. We wrapped up 2023 with some key thoughts on risk and innovation as independent and intersecting ideas, but we intentionally left out the idea of failure. This was done intentionally to elevate the importance of failure in the risk, innovation, failure triad. We are sure you noticed your whetted appetite. Truthfully, the risk/innovation articles in 2023 left us hungry for more. It is because the ideas of innovation and risk left out a critical question: “Risk plus innovation. I get it. But, how? HOW can our school or business embrace risk in our quest for innovation without running the train off the tracks?” In short, that answer is failure.
(TLDR, I’m in a hurry: “Intelligent Failure” is key to risk-taking and innovation at a systems level. Pour a glass of Cab. Read chapter 2, “Eureka!” of Edmondson, Amy. Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. New York, NY: Atria Books, 2023. It will take you 20-45 minutes depending on your highlighter. Thank her on LinkedIn because she is active and engaging on LI. Commit to “Failure Recoil,” an idea I’ll be writing about 4 posts from now.)
If JSS are specialists in learning, solutions, and “watching for rising,” then Dr. Amy C. Edmondson is THE expert in failure science, intelligent failure, and how failure is a major component of psychological safety in the workplace. The following 5 posts will draw heavily from her work as we attempt to:
apply them to the sectors we serve
draw out their mandatory (?) significance to organizational innovation
imagine them in the advancement/development arena
onboard them in your Board governance
give practical ways to implement them on the teams you lead
As you can imagine, this application will mess with your workplace culture…a lot. But if you’ll keep imagining, the culture of your organization on the other side of this Vinyasa stretching season will be healthier, seasoned in risk-taking, and poised for breakthrough and innovation.
Consider Edmondson’s words at the top of this post: “Any project that ends in successful innovation goes through multiple failures along the way because innovation occurs in the new territory where a compelling solution is yet to be developed.” (Edmondson, 2023, p 80)
As Edmondson directs us, we are going to be imagining new ways, new programs, new processes, new design, and new donor cultivation strategies that simply do not exist yet in your organization. This is new territory and will therefore require risk, discovery, and most certainly…failure. Here is the lineup for the next 5 blog posts in this series. We hope you’ll find each of them helpful, and perhaps, one of them particularly meaningful to your work.
Reposition Failure: Failure is Necessary, and We Must Increase Our Organizational Dependence on it
Inviting Failure to Dinner: How to Fit Intelligent Failure into your Independent School, Business, Nonprofit Organization, or Board of Director’s Culture
Governance and Failure: Board Trustees that Can Celebrate Failure
Failure Recoil: How to Elevate Learning in Failure
Failure and Fundraising: The Right Kind of Fundraising Failures
Failure is part of rising. We cannot even argue it is the “going down” part of rising because we think it is so necessary. Let us know how we can help you and your organization “Watch for Rising” as you try on some new ideas with your team this year.
