Tim846, you are right on with the “pretending to be perfect” statement. It is a huge burden.

Outsourced and Shanked, I think we’re talking apples and oranges here, but I feel your pain.

Maj Dan Ward, I loved your article- it was great! I’m now following you on Twitter as well

Comtnclimr, great point about the need for problem solving.

Jessy, thank you. Yes, you got what I was getting at. Pretending failures aren’t there doesn’t mean they aren’t.

What I was trying to say is, if the design of something is bad, it should be admitted openly (without fear) so that it can be fixed or redesigned before it becomes a safety or enormous cost issue. In the current environment, ego, stubbornness, and the “failure is not an option” culture keep people from admitting when something is a failure, so they keep going on and on in the wrong direction, leading to even greater losses.

That said, any organization can become too risk-averse. I’d prefer an environment that offered “brainstorming sessions” or “idea box socials,” where you celebrate/encourage the new ideas. That’s a little easier to sell–especially if the ideas are used–than “celebrating failure.”

My $.02.

/b

for me the big takeaway is that because failure is taboo, we pretend it’s not there, which leads to more failures on all fronts.

Part of challenge in accepting failure is that we are an optimistic society and don’t want to give up on things. Think about the whole “too big to fail” talk in the banking industry.

we also catergorize things as failures, even when overall they may not be.

Just look at all the things our government feels the need to intervene in.

The American dream now consists of going to college even if you don’t want to, having health insurance even if you don’t want the hassle, driving an American/hybrid car even if it doesn’t fit your needs, making a profit even if you have no business running a business, owning a home even if you can’t afford it, having enough money to retire even if you didn’t save for retirement,and earmarks are often given to those who couldn’t win federal dollars on their own merit.

In the process of making sure no one fails, have we forgotten that what we need most of all is to learn how to identify and solve problems. Like you said, learning to succeed involves learning to fail,to try better next time and to find strength within oneself to achieve what you set out to achieve. It’s ok to fail.

You might get a kick out of a little article I wrote this summer, titled Failure Is Inevitable. It was published in a DoD magazine – it’s available online here: http://www.dau.mil/pubs/dam/05.....-jun09.pdf

Exploration and discovery are dependent on a core concept: the unknown. Dealing with the unknown means being caught off-guard sometimes or even failing to find anything new. That’s part of the thrill and excitement: you don’t know what you might find or learn!

Failure is a necessary and valuable part of the process of inquiry, exploration, and discovery. Without the opportunity to fail, you can never do or learn anything really new.

NASA’s use of the “Failure is not an option” mantra has limited the opportunities for real, groundbreaking exploration and development. Nothing new can be implemented or tested on a large scale if there is the possibility it might not work and cause a PR “black eye” for the agency. Hence, versions of the same basic missions, tools, and processes are reused over and over because they are known to work.

Perhaps most tragic of all has been the impact on education and inspiration. Instead of encouraging our best and brightest students to aspire to work in the aerospace industry, this image of NASA (and anyone working on the space program) can be a deterrent to pursuing dreams of being a scientist, technician, engineer, or astronaut. A student that doesn’t earn top grades (or gets into some trouble) may never consider working for an agency where perfection is not merely expected, it is required.

I think it is time for NASA to move on from the failure-averse mindset. We are ready to see the agency take risks, move boldly, and expand our presence in the cosmos. NASA can again be the role model for discovery and exploration once it sheds the heavy burden of pretending to be perfect all the time.