Inviting Failure to Dinner: How to Fit Intelligent Failure Into Your Organization’s Culture
“Failures are more likely to happen in novel environments than consistent contexts…and yet we still get upset about them.” Edmondson, 2023
“So, why are we vacuuming the rug?”
Young John Sullivan was hyperaware of consistency, patterns, and (especially) inconsistency around the Sullivan home. Maybe it was anxiety or maybe it was curiosity - probably somewhere in between as that is how I live my life today, floating between really curious and stirred up. One significant inconsistency that really got me was the “clean the house for company” inconsistency. There were times where “company coming over” meant “no additional cleaning,” and then there were times where “company coming over” meant I had to clean out my sock drawer in case they came upstairs and checked between the main course and dessert.
Let us all consider, for a moment, how dinner illustrates a relational threshold each of us have with the people around us. Dinner with grandparents, family, and close church friends meant “no additional cleaning necessary.” Dinner with a few select others meant major cleaning, and “vacuum the rug under the table.” I remember, with way too much vividness, the night the encyclopedia salesman scheduled an evening at our house. He must have thought the Sullivans were sterile, it was so clean.
This is going somewhere.
There were some very important times when a person or family “crossed the threshold” of relational familiarity. They used to be “clean sock drawer guests.” But then they became “same crunched Cheetos on the rug from last time guests.” This was most often signaled by mom’s phrase, “You know I’m not a housekeeper. Y'all come on over though.”
The threshold had been crossed. The invitation to dinner became permanent. They were no longer guests. They were welcomed, regular company. They fit.
They fit into our regular consistent rhythms and required no family adjustments when they arrived.
They were expected to be there…or at the very least, it was never a surprise when they were there.
They didn’t ring the doorbell, and sometimes they brought a bag of ice.
We weren’t required to wear shirts (the Sullivan household was 3 brothers all now in our 30’s and 40’s).
Failure has to “fit” in your organization, and it won’t fit until you invite it over for dinner and make it ‘regular’ company. It must first be invited. It must next come into the room. And then it must get the signal to cross the threshold (for all the team to see and hear), “You know I’m not a housekeeper. Y'all come on over though.”
Failure, at the organizational level, must fit into your regular consistent rhythms and require no team adjustments when it arrives. As the leader of your organization, you should grow beyond simply tolerating failure when risks are taken and it happens; rather, you should anticipate it and direct your team to the novel space where failure is possible. It is only in that novel space that innovation can happen.
But does tolerating, anticipating, and celebrating failure in the novel space guarantee it will happen?
No. Not by itself. But it is the second step.
(Wait, what? Did I miss the first step?)
You didn’t miss it, and we plan to write more about this idea in the next series. We think the greatest moderator for innovation (and the risk/failure/learning that comes with it) is a team culture where it is “safe” to try and fail. Teams will only step out at risk if they trust, if they belong and are included, and if they are treated as an insider. (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006; Veli Korkmaz et al., 2022)
Ask yourself this question, “Does your team feel safe to try something new and fail at it? Or are they (like most others in the workforce) better off keeping you or other leaders off their backs?”
Championing failure for the sake of innovation will only happen on your team if your teammates feel safe enough to risk it, that is, safe enough with you and safe enough with others. There really is only one workplace culture that can allow the risk, innovation, and failure triad to occur, and that is a safe one.
Here are a few questions that will help you determine how safe your workplace culture is:
Do your teammates communicate honestly without fear of judgment? (Not ‘can they’ or ‘should they.’ Do you actually recall instances where this has happened?)
Are mistakes owned and treated as learning opportunities, or are they met with consequences?
Is there a mutual feeling of “I’m valued,” “I’m an insider,” and “I can contribute to my/our ideas?”
Is feedback respectful, frequent, and robust, allowing for all parties to participate and learn from it?
It would be good for us to consider, once again, Dr. Edmondson’s words about the environment where intelligent failures happen. She writes, “Failures are more likely to happen in novel environments than consistent contexts…and yet we still get upset about them.” The first part of her statement is a review for us, right? It’s that second half I want to draw attention to as we wrap up.
“...and yet we still get upset about them.”
The “we” of that statement is likely assumed to be the key leader. But I want to encourage us to consider a larger unit of analysis here. The “we” can be the leader, the one or team who fails, or even the teammates of the one/team who fails. When failure is invited to the table (and is more than just tolerated), then we have to have teams who stop getting upset about them.
It is time we invite failure over for dinner and signal that it is here to stay. It is time we let the family know that this is just “how we’re doing things now,” and help them create the kind of safe workplace environment needed to take new innovative ground.
Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2006). Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(7), 941–966. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.413
Veli Korkmaz, A., Van Engen, M. L., Knappert, L., & Schalk, R. (2022). About and beyond leading uniqueness and belongingness: A systematic review of inclusive leadership research. Human Resource Management Review, 32(4), 100894.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2022.100894
