Logically thinking, one way to work out which products, ideas, concepts, business plans to back would be to measure them by exception against a record of which ones have failed in the past and why. Like an inverted business school. Eventually, when everyone has logged, Wiki-like, their experiences of failure and corporate calamity, explanations of why they failed and what they would or wouldn’t do if they had their time again, willing wannabes would pay for access to the system to check out if their ideas, products or plans were likely to work out or not. If it was clever enough it could even score ideas for likelihood of success.
Because, frankly, I think it’s rather odd that culturally we restrict professional development and learning to positive role model material. And by doing so we blindly dismiss the value of negative and unsuccessful experiences and anecdotes.
I would guess that a culture which rejects failure has done so because it has instinctively decided that those who have failed have nothing whatsoever to offer because, after all, they are failures. However, this one-way attitude to success/failure means that we are unlikely to ever see losers and failed business gurus doing the global speaking circuit challenging the likes of Tom Peters or Michael Porter. For they would, ironically, have become successful as a result of their failure and the world as we know it would instantly collapse in on itself, obliterated in an instant in a puff of smoke.
Who’s in?
Because, frankly, I think it’s rather odd that culturally we restrict professional development and learning to positive role model material. And by doing so we blindly dismiss the value of negative and unsuccessful experiences and anecdotes.
I would guess that a culture which rejects failure has done so because it has instinctively decided that those who have failed have nothing whatsoever to offer because, after all, they are failures. However, this one-way attitude to success/failure means that we are unlikely to ever see losers and failed business gurus doing the global speaking circuit challenging the likes of Tom Peters or Michael Porter. For they would, ironically, have become successful as a result of their failure and the world as we know it would instantly collapse in on itself, obliterated in an instant in a puff of smoke.
Who’s in?