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Failure is not an option….No, it’s inevitable.In today’s business environment it is almost impossible to fail somewhere along the way. The issues are: first, will I accept that reality? Then can I act so that when I do fail, it is cheap and useful?

Time was when we would develop methodologies that tried to avoid failure altogether. This was a conceit. The way it was typically evidenced in project management was to start further and further back in design:

“We need a plan first.” (This seems like good sense, doesn’t it?)

“Well we need a business case first.” (Of course, who would argue with that; I wouldn’t.)

“Yes but before that we need a Project Brief.”

“Yes, but before that we need a Project Mandate.”

“OK, but before that we need some kind of Strategic Objectives.”

“Yes, but first we need our Vision, Mission and Values.”

We can carry on with this seemingly-rational nonsense for as long as we wish – many consultants and business “gurus” do just that. (Confession time: I own up to having done that in the past as well! )

But when do we actually do something? Where is the execution?

“Oh, no. We’re not ready for that yet. What if we do the wrong thing or do it badly?”

I sometimes think we’ve created a kind of management Catch 22 where we go around and around in ever decreasing circles, never achieving anything substantive. Fear of failure has become a sort of management political correctness. It’s time to face this demon. Is failure always a bad thing? Surely the worst failure of all is never achieving a return on our efforts. Truly we have become victims of paralysis by analysis.

There are two realities we need to get to grips with in breaking out of this syndrome:

1. The world is more complex than our models. It is a world where there are unknowns. The unknowns prevent us from planning out all failure. Only as we experiment, execute, are we going to discover more about that complexity.
2. We often operate in a management culture of fear. Fear is always bad counselor. Fear is a dreadful strategy and a poor modus operandi. We need courage. With courage we can devise small steps of execution where we are not betting the farm, but instead discovering more and learning from these unexpected results.

My colleague, Richard Rose, and I spoke recently at a conference on Agile Project Management. I found many there who were new to Agile. Others, by contrast, had been so long immersed in Agile practice that they had forgotten the true value of incremental, Just-Enough-Design-Up-Front management. When I said, “Failure is not an option, it’s inevitable,” it seemed lights went on within both groups. Those weary with traditional management that promises much but delivers little, and those immersed in newer, more empirical approaches, both need to be aware of the value of limited failure. We hypothesize about this complex world, test, examine the results, adapt and move on. W.E. Deming had nailed this years ago in his PDCA cycle.

We need a kind of empirical humility about what will happen if we take this action, test it and then see if we are right.

I’d like to think this is what my fellow consultants and I truly make our most valuable contribution. We are sense-makers.