↗️ The Degrees of Failure

If someone encountes failure, it's either their fault or it is not. Right?

Is it really that simple?

Last week, I came across an interesting concept in my archives that breaks up this binary thinking*. I want to share it with you today

Here are reasons for failure, from most to least blameworthy.

Everyone you meet can be a teacher: let's adopt a mindset of continuous learning from every interaction.

1️⃣ Deviance: An individual chooses to violate a prescribed process or practice.

2️⃣ Inattention: An individual inadvertently deviates from specifications by diverting their attention.

3️⃣ Lack of ability: An individual knows they don't have the actual skills, conditions or training to execute the job, but engage nonetheless.

4️⃣ Process inadequacy: A very competent individual adheres to a prescribed but faulty or incomplete process.

5️⃣ Task challenge: An individual faces a task too difficult to be executed reliably every time.

6️⃣ Process complexity: A process composed of many elements breaks down when it encounters novel interactions.

7️⃣ Uncertainty: A lack of clarity about future events causes people to take seemingly reasonable actions that produce undesirable results.

8️⃣ Hypothesis testing: An experiment conducted to prove that an idea or design will succeed fails instead.

9️⃣ Exploratory testing: An experiment conducted to expand knowledge and investigate a possibility leads to an undesirable result.

While the above is far from an exact science, it reminds us that things can go wrong for a variety of reasons. It's all too easy to assign blame, while the truth is necessarily messy and grey. And punishing someone's whose well-executed experiment failed is not just a bad idea, it's also counterproductive.

Wish you a great week ahead with lots of wins and permissible misses ☺️.

* Unfortunately, I don't have the source anymore to share with you where it came from. Likely a book or article. Apologies.