Whether you’re running a small startup or a Fortune 500 corporation, the ability and willingness to learn from failure is paramount for future success. And yet, focusing too much on understanding past failures can unexpectedly reinforce mistakes, creating the illusion of learning rather than enabling real improvement. So what does it take to glean accurate, actionable insight from a post-mortem?
Don’t Learn the Wrong Lessons from Failure
Three common traps that leaders fall into — and how to avoid them.
March 29, 2023
Summary.
Past experience can offer highly valuable insight into future outcomes — but only when leveraged effectively. In this piece, the authors discuss three common traps that leaders fall into when attempting to learn from failures: They invest in strategies that don’t help, they overlook strategies that would help, and they don’t notice when seemingly good outcomes are driven by bad processes. To avoid these pitfalls, the authors suggest that decision-makers should analyze successes and failures in tandem, and work to identify the traits and processes that actually differentiate the two.