Leading on the Forward Edge – At Work · Weekend Reflections for Leaders · Reflection: “What We Do With Failure”

There is a moment in most operating reviews worth watching closely. A number comes up short. The owner of that number gives a brief, careful explanation. A senior executive says a version of "understood, let's keep moving," and the room exhales and advances to the next slide, where the news is better. The whole exchange takes ninety seconds, and everyone in the room understands exactly what just happened.

Most large organizations would prefer to sweep failure under the rug and get back to the positive discussion. It feels like good leadership. It protects the energy of the meeting, it spares a colleague some discomfort, and it keeps the review on schedule.

That preference is expensive twice.

The first cost is obvious once it is named. We paid full price for the failure; the money, the quarter, the people's effort and then declined to collect the only thing it produced, which was the learning. The second cost is slower and far more damaging. Our top talent are watching that ninety-second exchange, and they draw the correct conclusion: the safe career move here is to never attempt anything that could visibly fail. Over a few years, that lesson quietly selects for a leadership bench of people who have never tested themselves, in a marketplace that continues to grow in complexity and uncertainty.

Sitting through enough talent assessment sessions over the years, I have found that how a person handled a real failure tells me more about their future than any list of their wins. Wins are heavily contaminated by market conditions, timing, and the quality of the team they inherited. Failure, handled in public, shows character under load.

Three things are worth changing, and none of them require a program.

1. The failure review. Install a standing fifteen-minute item at the front of the monthly operating review, not the end, where it will be cut for time called What We Learned. One miss, presented by the person who owned it, in one written page: what we expected, what happened, what changed our mind, and what we will do differently by a specific date. The rule that makes it survive is that the presenter is never the defendant. If the session turns into an inquest even once, the practice is dead and nobody will bring a real miss to it again. Fifteen minutes at the front of the agenda is also a signal that costs nothing and communicates more than any statement about values.
2. The talent slate. Add one question to the standard talent review template: describe the most significant thing this person attempted that did not work, and what they did in the following ninety days. In having sat through these sessions, I have found the answers sort people quickly. Some managers cannot produce an example at all, which tells us the person has been carefully managing their exposure, or that the manager does not know them. Some produce a failure the person hid until it could no longer be hidden. And some describe someone who put the problem on the table early, pulled the team in, and came back with a plan. That third answer is the one worth promoting, and it is invisible on a slate built only from results.
3. Our own scar tissue. Senior executives model this or they do not, and the team can tell the difference instantly between a real admission and a polished one. A failure we tell as a story where we were ultimately vindicated is not an admission; it is a favorable story told slowly, and everyone in the room can hear it. The useful version is specific, recent, still slightly uncomfortable, and includes what it cost. I have found that going first is the only reliable way to open the door, because nobody below us will take a risk we have not visibly taken ourselves.

None of this is an argument for tolerating carelessness, and the distinction matters. Repeating the same failure is a performance problem and should be handled as one. A well-reasoned attempt that did not work is the price of operating on the forward edge, and organizations that cannot tell those two apart end up punishing both, which is how a business becomes cautious without anyone ever deciding to make it so.

We do not get to choose whether our organizations fail. We only get to choose whether the failure is examined out loud, so it produces something, or handled quietly, so it produces nothing but a lesson in career self-preservation. Over the long haul, that choice shows up in who we have left on the bench when the difficult decisions arrive.

If I were to ask you, "What is the most difficult leadership challenge you are facing today?" what would you say?

Please reach out if I can help you today. My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com

This reflection builds on two earlier Weekend Reflections for Leaders posts: The Assessment of Top Talent and Trial and Error.

Questions this reflection answers

How should leaders handle failure in operating reviews?

Put a standing fifteen-minute What We Learned item at the front of the monthly review. The owner presents one miss on one page: what we expected, what happened, what changed our mind, and what we will do differently by a date. The presenter is never the defendant, or the practice dies.

What is the difference between failure and carelessness?

Repeating the same failure is a performance problem and should be handled as one. A well-reasoned attempt that did not work is the price of operating on the forward edge. Organizations that cannot tell the two apart end up punishing both and become cautious without ever deciding to.