Should Failure Be Rewarded To Spur Innovation? 146
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Soulskill
from the you-ruined-all-the-backups-here-is-20-bucks dept.
from the you-ruined-all-the-backups-here-is-20-bucks dept.
Lucas123 writes "Paper products maker Kimberly-Clark drove the morale of its IT infrastructure group into the ground after massive firings and outsourcing. When they hired a new VP of Infrastructure four years later to turn things around, he implemented a program to spur innovation. The VP took a venture capitalist approach where any employee could submit an idea and if accepted, make a pitch in 30 minutes or less. If the idea had merit, it received first, then second rounds of funding. If not, the employee's idea still got lauded on the company's internal Sharepoint site. As he puts it, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. It's about what we learn from the failure. Not the failure itself. We celebrate that learning.'"
Is this a joke? (Score:4, Interesting)
If not, the employee's idea still got lauded on the company's internal Sharepoint site. As he puts it, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. It's about what we learn from the failure. Not the failure itself. We celebrate that learning.
Really? Seriously?
I'm supposed to be motivated by a mention on a sharepoint site?
Alan Kay (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems
I think I'd find failing 90% of the time completely demoralising, but it's certainly true that if you never fail then you're probably not exploring really interesting possibilities.
Real rewards (Score:5, Interesting)
failure as a teaching method (Score:5, Interesting)
I teach a robotics class for 9th-12th graders using NXT Mindstorm. I have a number of challenges which are difficult to finish by design. When I grade, I tell them they are supposed to fail, and the grade is not for failing to achieve the task, but how they overcome that failure, and (as important) how they formulated a new solution as a team. I look for progress in working towards a goal. Since we have a time constraint on each challenge, often half the teams will not reach the goal.
But along the way, I see some very interesting solutions and innovative ideas. Once I take away the risk of failing for not achieving goal "A", the students become much more daring (or as daring as you can be with Mindstorm robots) in trying out new ideas to the problem. This is my second year doing this class, and I have two teams going to the state robotics competition.
Re:Better phrasing (Score:5, Interesting)
> They hand out incentives for trying. Subtle differences ...
Correct. Good point.
If you want to find a miserable employee, just look for the guy or gal who's working for a moron who thinks everything can be accomplished with a bullwhip. Anyone who's a decent manager knows that it's stick ... AND carrot. And it has to be sincere, too. I appreciate my assistants and try to tell them that on a regular basis. And yeah (answering someone else's post here), they DO appreciate mentions and little letters from the company president. If it's a larger company, a little recognition goes a long way.
I encourage my guys to be creative. And here's the most important thing: I have a rock-solid rule that I beat into their heads. "If you screw up, if you break something or make a mistake, as long as it's an honest mistake, come admit it and we'll fix it." Now, if you're horsing around or slacking off an break something, I'm gonna hammer you. But if it's an honest screw-up, we'll fix it and move on.
My brother used to do food industry, and he told me the best story I've ever heard about that: fast food joint. Busy, busy, employees scrambling behind the counter. An employee drops a couple of burgers and the manager screams at her. A few minutes later, she drops something else, he threatens to fire her.
So ... sure enough, it's crazy, everyone is scrambling ... she drops something else. Some fries go on the floor. She looks around in a panic, notes that the manager isn't watching .. . .. . and quickly picks the fries off the floor AND PUTS THEM BACK IN THE SERVING BIN.
I've never forgotten that story. Being the PHP From Doom every time an employee makes a mistake simply means that they'll start covering them up ... and so you've now got a computer running with an obvious bug, or a microwave link with a broken connector that's taped back together (true stories both). And you don't even know it!
Carrot AND stick. And it has to be sincere, too. Not something that you force yourself to learn.
Learning requires "failure" (Score:5, Interesting)
Share the "failure". Let others take a look at it. Let someone else take a stab at it.
The "Reward" in this case sounds like they're recognizing employees who are making an effort to change things. They are providing information about the project attempt and letting others know what's going on instead of sweeping it under the rug and ignoring that it ever happened.
Done PROPERLY I can see this being a major positive, especially for morale. "Hey, Bob went to pitch his idea today, but it didn't pan out. I think I see what killed it and I might have a solution for that..." Granted I also expect massive backstabbing if this is implemented wrong. Instead of collaboration it can very quickly devolve into theft and sabotage.
There's an old Microsoft story that's apropos (Score:5, Interesting)
A salesman once screwed up and lost a contract early in Microsoft's history, then appeared before Bill Gates expecting to be fired for his mistake. Instead Bill told him that his job was secure, because (I'm paraphrasing like mad here) he'd learned a valuable lesson and knew an approach that would not work next time, so it was better for the company to keep him rather than hire someone else without this experience.
Not a new idea among clueful bosses, in other words.
Re:Alan Kay (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I'd find failing 90% of the time completely demoralising, but it's certainly true that if you never fail then you're probably not exploring really interesting possibilities.
relevant [biologists.org].