Comments on: When Failure is our Best Option

By: Above and Beyond KM » Blog Archive » Hiding From Bad News?

Above and Beyond KM » Blog Archive » Hiding From Bad News? — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:37:05 +0000

[...] Similarly, members of the military undertake after action reviews. Some organizations have begun to understand the value of “failure parties.” When was the last time members of your firm completed [...]

By: When Failure is our Best Option « Beyond 140

When Failure is our Best Option « Beyond 140 — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:07:20 +0000

[...] When Failure is our Best Option Cross posted from original at openNASA [...]

By: flyingjenny

flyingjenny — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:41:35 +0000

Great comments-

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.

By: flyingjenny

flyingjenny — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:30:39 +0000

Tutiger87 and BD, I think you’re missing what I was trying to get across here. I was not suggesting that NASA celebrate failures, but rather admit them when they surface, in order to move forward. This post was aimed more at the design, ground operations, and business sides of NASA, not MCC ops. I thought that would be clear given the examples I used, such as the design of a spacecraft or a computer system for submitting travel expense reports. Mission Control activities only make up a tiny fraction of the work NASA does.

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.

By: BD

BD — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:38:01 +0000

“Hey, we just blew up a rocket and killed the crew! Party time!” This idea would have to be applied very carefully. Often it is not just lives at stake, but careers. If individuals responsible for a failure are fired (a likely scenario), it seems a little frivolous to try to create a festive atmosphere out of it. Yes, I understand the INTENTIONS, but the reactions of workers are unpredictable. No one wants to dance on someone else’s grave.

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.

By: Jessy

Jessy — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:11:49 +0000

@tutiger87 i’m pretty sure jen didnt mean to imply that we should celebrate failure resulting in the loss of human life, but that perhaps “celebrating” (acknowledging, discussing, *learning from*) failure in designs that will ultimately support those human flights would make them safer and more effective– or lead us to new innovative options.

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.

By: tutiger87

tutiger87 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:57:12 +0000

WTF?! None of you work in Flight Control do you? Are you guys kidding me? Failure parties?! In Human Spaceflight, failure cannot, and never will be an option. When we fail in the MCC, people die. I won’t disagree with you about NASA’s being overly risk averse sometimes, but you have got to draw the line when it comes to the mission of launching people on top of a 4 million lb bomb, and then bringing them back from a vacuum at 25,000 MPH to zero.

By: comtnclimr

comtnclimr — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:32:31 +0000

Great post!

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.

By: Maj Dan Ward, USAF

Maj Dan Ward, USAF — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:26:03 +0000

Great post – always fun to see what the Open NASA crew is up to! Love the idea of failure parties!

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

By: Outsourced and Shanked

Outsourced and Shanked — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:17:53 +0000

That’s nice. All the companies I’ve ever worked out celebrated failures by giving huge bonuses, pay hikes, and stock grants to the executives, laying off everyone not responsible for the failure, and declaring mission accomplished. That’s at least the way it seems to work in Silicon Valley. And on Wall Street. Hell, almost every publicly traded company.