How to be a Failure (and still Succeed)

Failure is not always bad, it just feels bad. Failure is also typically the most powerful teacher, which sounds pretty positive. We all fail from time to time, so why is it that collectively we have a poor attitude about failure? Might we ALL learn more if we had a better attitude around failure?

Failure is not always bad, it just feels bad. Failure is also typically the most powerful teacher, which sounds pretty positive. We all fail from time to time, so why is it that collectively we have a poor attitude about failure? Why do we attempt to hide our mistakes? Why is this even worse in IT and technology? Might we ALL learn more if we had a better attitude around failure?

In this talk I’ll share some of the psychological structures around failure and then provide ways that we can make failure a positive part of our professional and organizational development. We’ll explore the role failure has in increasing performance and achieving organizational goals. I will talk about how there is nothing wrong with being a failure; it’s more about how we all respond to our failures.

Much of my career was spent in operational roles where the response to failure was how I made a living. During those years I also adopted development and analytics skills to improve responsiveness and minimize failure in complex systems. Now I advise organizations on how to improve their organizations so that they can improve their responses to failure. Plus, I’m a consistent failure. :-)

Can do this as an ignite talk, but more appropriate for a full talk.

A few topics discussed in this talk: Identifying and tracking failure - Observability and response Building systems and processes that are safe to fail Safe to fail experimentation Learning from your failures Automating failure response Teaching others about failures Improving attitude and support around failure