A quote from Dave Snowden, but first I want to talk about the Husky. For a while the Husky has been attending hydrotherapy sessions (all part of her rehabilitation after knee ligament replacement surgery). The Husky quite enjoys the hydrotherapy sessions, so do I, but for different reasons. One of us because of getting a […]
The James Reason Swiss Cheese Failure Model in 300 Seconds
James Reason Swiss Cheese Model. Source: BMJ, 2000 Mar 18:320(7237): 768-770 A while ago I was part of the Cardiff pilot of Practical Strategies for Learning from Failure (#LFFdigital). My job was to explain the James Reason Swiss Cheese Failure Model in 300 seconds (5 minutes). This is what I did. The Swiss Cheese Model of […]
Good Practice Case Studies, No #Failure? You’re Doing It Wrong.
Good practice case studies are like Hollywood movie trailers…… they only show you the best bits of what happened (with some exceptions). Sorry if that’s upset anyone, I am trying to be helpful. There is a great deal that can be learnt from the things that ‘didn’t quite go to plan’ (failure in many cases). […]
Corporate Amnesia: Deliberately Forgetting Failure Can Be Hard Work
The recent VW emissions scandal has brought together two interesting ideas, corporate amnesia and learning from failure. Instead of learning lessons from failure and retaining them in the corporate memory (so you don’t make the same mistakes in the future), what if organisations adopted the opposite approach? What if an organisation took action to deliberately […]
Loving and Learning from Failure. Great idea, but how does it work?
“Accept that failure will happen and learn the lessons”. That could be a classic from the dictionary of “easy to say, hard to do” inspirational quotes. You know the ones, they get posted all over Facebook with backgrounds of epic landscapes or golden sunsets. I fully agree with the sentiment, but how does this work in a […]
“Failure is not an option…..” Daleks, the enforcers of Best Practice.
I don’t think this is an actual Dalek quote, but it should be….. “Failure is not an option…. exterminate!” I’m back to pursuing learning from failure after listening to an episode of The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4, featuring Professor Dame Wendy Hall. In response to a question (27mins) on why the UK doesn’t […]
Failure Models and NUMB3RS. How do you get from backwards look to real time learning?
If you’ve seen the television show NUMB3RS you may have the impression that it is possible to mathematically predict complex situations. Gather some NUMB3RS (data, information etc), apply a relevant mathematical model, calculate the next occurrence of the event and catch the perpetuator in the act. All you need is the application of some fiendishly […]
Failure* should be part of your CV (*= fast intelligent failure)
Now that’s a statement that might cause a few recruitment consultants and career coaches to splutter into their skinny macchiato. Surely its all about winning and trumpeting your success, isn’t it? Admitting to failure, and claiming it as some sort of achievement is a pretty alien concept. In many organisations the approach to failure is […]
Learning from Failure. The more it hurts the better you learn.
I’ve heard lot of people recently going on about how necessary it is to fail. “Fail fast, fail forward”, “Learn the lessons from failure, and move on”, “Take risks and accept that some things will fail”, “Share your mistakes”. It’s all a bit worrying if you’ve spent your working life in organisations where failure (and […]
What's the PONT 