IS FAILURE GOOD? OF COURSE NOT!
Sorry to disappoint you—yet, in the strange logic of social media, even stating the obvious can sound oddly prophetic. It is genuinely fascinating how our era has managed to transform the “failure fad” into a veritable cult of failure, a fetish dressed up as profundity.
Does this mean we should all become relentless perfectionists? Certainly not. The pursuit of “perfect” is notorious for becoming the enemy of good, and there is much to be said for learning how to “satisfice”—carefully discerning which battles are truly worth fighting.
Nor does it imply that we should endlessly chastise ourselves (or others) when we fall short of our intentions. Compassion, humility, and forgiveness are essential virtues, recognising both our inevitable fallibility and the need to encourage fearless, even playful, experimentation.
Still, none of this remotely justifies the curious spectacle of “fuck-up Fridays” or the mindless celebration of mistakes, every time something goes awry. (Sorry, party people! ;-)) As Amy Edmondson observes in her recent work, not all failures are created equal: some are the “right” kind of wrong—worthy of recognition—while others are not. Amy proposes that good failures possess four characteristics:
They occur when venturing into new territory, not when performing routine work;
They are driven by genuine opportunity, where the potential upside justifies the risks undertaken;
They are informed by appropriate knowledge, clearly framed by ‘a priori’ hypotheses rather than random shots in the dark;
They are “as small as possible”—after all, there’s little sense in blowing up the lab if the same lesson could be learned with a test-tube experiment.
Amy even adds a “bonus” condition: ideally, we would actually learn from our mistakes. Arguably, my own priorities differ slightly from Amy’s—she may have in mind the controlled realm of academic research, rather than the messier terrain of corporate #transformation. In the world of organisational change, continuously generating actionable insight is not a luxury, but the point: the raison d’être of any “reasoned” failure is precisely organisational learning.
This raises a deeper question: what are the insights most worth striving for? When it comes to organisational evolution, I am inclined to agree with Alfred Adler, who once noted that “all our big problems are RELATIONSHIP problems.” In my experience, the most significant leadership breakthroughs arise not from technical innovation but from the crucible of relational creativity, conflict, or crisis. It is telling that psychology has produced a rich taxonomy of developmental stages—endless colours, labels, and elegant models—while giving surprisingly little attention to those all-important “transitions” in between.
Perhaps, then, before we uncork the next bottle of champagne for Failure Friday, we should concern ourselves less with our slip-ups (or successes) in the execution of projects, product launches, or campaigns. Far more worthy of celebration is the never-routine, often arduous collaboration with others—especially when it leads to genuine learning about ourselves, or catalyses healthier team dynamics. In short, the real prize is “post-traumatic growth”: the individual or collective transformation that propels us toward the next stage of development.
Of course, this has little to do with Amy Edmondson’s procedural instructions for maximising value from failure. Ultimately, it is not about WHAT we do, but about WHO we are. It is about honouring our profoundly human capacity to transcend ego, to transform mundane moments of togetherness into lasting memories of joy and growth, and to elevate one another—to become our best selves, for and with each other. So here’s to all who, all week long, not only accept human limitation with humility but also embrace, and even celebrate, our remarkable ability to re-enchant life at work—for good.
#transformation #goodorganisations #leadership #organisationalchange #agility #teal #membership