In the ‘good old days’, leadership for most businesses was about how to optimise the performance and focus of our people to improve output, profitability, and/or market share. Our goals were clear, we were about growing the business in markets, with a relatively small proportion of available revenue dedicated to innovation and exploring new opportunities. Employing our Growth Mindset, as coined by Carol Dweck in 2006, served us well. Our belief that our intelligence and abilities could be developed through dedication, effort, and learning helped us succeed. This still remains true today, but with the Age of AI about to disrupt and revolutionise our world, it is time to adapt and shift our thinking and approach to leadership. Maybe it is time to explore a failure mindset as we enter this era of reinvention.
As a transformational change specialist who has worked with large and small organisations, I have helped thousands of people adapt to incremental and transformational change, but never revolutionary change. The nearest lived comparison I have for what lies ahead with AI is the upheaval COVID created in the early 2020s. Today, our old normal needs to change, and accompanying any change is the unknown and increased risk of failure. But for those willing to lead the way venturing into these unknown lands, the potential rewards will create the next trillion-dollar companies and billionaires.
Failure mindset in action
Being able to fail successfully will be key to taking advantage of these opportunities. As Brene Brown notes “There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” The ability to ‘fail fast, learn fast and fix fast’ are principles Australian company Gilmore Space Technologies incorporates into their culture. CEO Adam Gilmour acknowledged the high likelihood of initial failures in rocket launches, emphasizing the value of each attempt in gathering data to improve future missions. The expectation of high failure rates is rational given that their work is groundbreaking and leading edge. If the path had been trodden previously, then there would be road maps to follow and a significantly reduced failure rate along with the reduced rewards. If failure is the key to success in a rapidly changing world then establishing a positive culture based on reinvention and failure should be a priority for most companies over the next couple of years.
Here are 3 things you can do right now to create a Reinvention Culture that positively leverages failure:
Focus on change acceptance
In a world where the rate of change is increasing exponentially, acceptance would seem to be the most rational approach. But, as humans, most of us are resistant to change unless it is on our terms. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. The habits and behaviours we had built around our old normasl quickly become irrelevant, and in some cases detrimental, as we resist change. Change is emotional as people adapt at varying speeds and experience the resulting grieving cycle differently. Creating an environment that is honest and supportive to lead the team through the unknown is key to helping your people reinvent.
Create a positive failure culture
Failure is rarely something that makes it into our KPIs, after all, we are measured on results of growth. Inevitably, we focus on motivating our people to also succeed based on those growth KPIs. Establishing a culture that accepts failure is a part of growing and adapting is a balancing act between maintaining the focus on achieving results while exploring new opportunities. This also requires authentic communications and training to help people learn how to fail positively. The key is being able to develop a vision in your team where accepting failure is integral to learning, growing and reinvention.
Maintain a positive environment
Change is stressful, have fun to release the pressure and keep a positive mindset. We all love the dream of success and fear the humiliation of public failure. Asking the team to publicly fail will not succeed unless you create an environment where it is safe to share our failures. Some things you can do include leading the way and show that you are willing to share failures and ask for help by owning the flop. Be honest when something didn’t go as planned. Don’t sugarcoat it or blame others. Teams respect leaders who take accountability and move forward. Reward risk, not just results by encouraging smart experimentation. Celebrate bold ideas, even if they don’t pan out. Innovation is impossible without a few failures. Turn mistakes into momentum by helping your team analyse failures rather than criticise. Every failure carries data. Analyse it. Adapt. And then take your next step, smarter than before.
Helping create a positive reinvention and failure culture all comes down to your leadership. It takes a strong leader to be vulnerable and admit that they are a failure, but a successful leader to be able to develop a positive failure culture to help their team reinvent themselves. Of course you can choose to not instill this reinvention culture, but then ultimately you are likely to fail in this rapidly changing world impacted by AI. Either way, you are going to fail, but only one path will lead you to being a successful failure.
