Are You Allergic To Admitting Failures?

We recently blogged about the importance of learning from failures in order to achieve success. It was a short post, so here is a follow-up. I just finished reading “10 Ways Failure Leads to Success” on BNET. I love one of the thoughts in the post:

Unfortunately, many leaders seem to be allergic to the whole idea of admitting failure. I’ve seen it dozens of times with business leaders, political leaders, CEOs, and executives.

Here are a few of the items from their list:

• Change management. Ever try changing a company system or process that involves lots of people? If you have, then you’ve failed. And if you didn’t learn from it, then you’re still no good at it.
• Managing people. I don’t care what business schools say; you don’t learn this in school. You learn it on the job by making mistakes and learning what works and what doesn’t. Period.
• Strategic planning. Any strategic planning process must begin with an analysis of what’s working and what isn’t. The “W” in SWOT stands for weaknesses, and with good reason.
• Post mortems. If you don’t do post mortems on lost customers and failed product launches and marketing campaigns, you’re far less likely to get it right the next time.

Be sure to read the BNET article for the entire list.