Rowley Associates

Is failure ever an option?

The film “Apollo 13” introduced moviegoers to the maxim, “Failure is not an option”. Widely attributed to Gene Kranz, lead flight director for NASA Mission Control, the statement has entered business speak since 1995: I’ve used it with some clients myself to convey both the need for commitment and urgency. But are there occasions when a leader should declare that failure is an option?  Jack (from the gut) Welsh is clear there is not. Welsh recently criticized the Obama administration for “undermining success by talking about the risks of failure”.  Although I don’t usually have much time for Welch his criticism gave me pause for thought. If a leader says, “there is a 30% chance of failure” doesn’t that demotivate people? Actually, I think not. Perhaps an honest assessment of risk and reward is what’s’ truly needed to engage a team, business or nation.  I feel that not sharing the true nature of risk disempowers followers, creating a fairy-tale scenario will can increase the risk of failure. Which would you prefer, the truth of the situation or a ‘puff-piece’ designed to make you feel better?

When failure is an option

Recent research indicates 50% of executives fail. This statistic suggests that failure, far from not being an option, is commonplace in organizations.  Indeed making a ‘friend of failure’ would seem a required mind-set for any leader trying to drive innovation into his or her team or company. Rather than see failure as a zero-sum game better to understand the psychology of risk, reward and failure.

Part of understanding a Leaders response to failure is to determine his or her risk profile. I define this as the degree to which a person is willing to make a decision that if successful will have a significant impact on the business but has a risk of failure. I was recently working with a leadership team to discuss ‘Big Bets’. Now to me a ‘Big Bet’ is just that – a bet on a strategy or objective that contains a risk of failure but, if successful can significantly impact the bottom line. To determine the team’s ‘risk profile’ I had them line up against an imaginary scale – one end was ‘risk averse’ the other a ‘high tolerance’ for risk. What was interesting was the line up didn’t follow the normal distribution but the team tended to cluster at either end of the scale.  The ‘line up’ also helped people in the team better understand each other’s approach to risk. Failure to endorse an idea was seen not a criticism of the person or idea but more of a manifestation of the thinking driven by a fear of failure or risk. It also helped me make sure that I had the right combination of ‘risk-profiles’ when I split the team into smaller groups. So take a moment and consider your ‘risk’ profile – are you more risk averse or do you like to ‘push the envelope’ and have a greater tolerance for risk behavior? How might your colleagues see you?

Oh, by the way Gene Kranz never said ‘Failure is not an option’. When interviewed by Hollywood Execs he actually commented, “when bad things happened we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution”.  Never giving up on finding a solution says everything about Kranz and his team – persistent, committed and prepared to try anything to bring the astronauts safely home. Failure is always an option it just doesn’t have to be the outcome if everyone pulls together and understands the risks and outcomes involved