17 September 2014 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
Organisations would be more dynamic, and have greater success, if they promoted a culture of openness about failure, according to Alicia Clegg in the FT this week. “Employers often talk about empowering people to take risks and learn from mistakes. Yet few organisations know how to talk about failure when it happens, still less how to learn from it”, she says. She believes there is increasing evidence that morale and performance can improve if people are allowed to talk about their mistakes, without fear of reprisals.
“Serious failures are often the last step in a chain of smaller ones – putting the wrong person on a job, failing to supervise, etc − that pile up catastrophically”, the article says. “They may seem inevitable; but at any point someone could have intervened. It simply requires people to act when they spot others, including bosses, making mistakes”.
In order for this to happen, Organisations should take steps to ensure that employees know that it is safe to talk about mistakes, and often this needs leading from the top. “senior leaders can drop the pretence of infallibility and talk about “when they didn’t succeed” instead of only talking about successes. Publicly applauding employees who raise the alarm sends a message that the responsibility for preventing errors is shared by all.” Read the full article here.
