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Should Failure Be Rewarded To Spur Innovation?
Lucas123 writes "Paper products maker Kimberly-Clark drove the morale of its IT infrastructure group into the ground after massive firings and outsourcing. When they hired a new VP of Infrastructure four years later to turn things around, he implemented a program to spur innovation. The VP took a venture capitalist approach where any employee could submit an idea and if accepted, make a pitch in 30 minutes or less. If the idea had merit, it received first, then second rounds of funding. If not, the employee's idea still got lauded on the company's internal Sharepoint site. As he puts it, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. It's about what we learn from the failure. Not the failure itself. We celebrate that learning.'"
Until Morale Improves.
If not, the employee's idea still got lauded on the company's internal Sharepoint site. As he puts it, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. It's about what we learn from the failure. Not the failure itself. We celebrate that learning.
Really? Seriously?
I'm supposed to be motivated by a mention on a sharepoint site?
What they don't do is "rewarding failure". They hand out incentives for trying. Subtle differences between those two....
If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems
I think I'd find failing 90% of the time completely demoralising, but it's certainly true that if you never fail then you're probably not exploring really interesting possibilities.
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I wonder if the employee which proposed the idea is appointed to implement it or if s/he gets a share of the money the company makes or saves.
I teach a robotics class for 9th-12th graders using NXT Mindstorm. I have a number of challenges which are difficult to finish by design. When I grade, I tell them they are supposed to fail, and the grade is not for failing to achieve the task, but how they overcome that failure, and (as important) how they formulated a new solution as a team. I look for progress in working towards a goal. Since we have a time constraint on each challenge, often half the teams will not reach the goal.
But along the way, I see some very interesting solutions and innovative ideas. Once I take away the risk of failing for not achieving goal "A", the students become much more daring (or as daring as you can be with Mindstorm robots) in trying out new ideas to the problem. This is my second year doing this class, and I have two teams going to the state robotics competition.
Share the "failure". Let others take a look at it. Let someone else take a stab at it.
The "Reward" in this case sounds like they're recognizing employees who are making an effort to change things. They are providing information about the project attempt and letting others know what's going on instead of sweeping it under the rug and ignoring that it ever happened.
Done PROPERLY I can see this being a major positive, especially for morale. "Hey, Bob went to pitch his idea today, but it didn't pan out. I think I see what killed it and I might have a solution for that..." Granted I also expect massive backstabbing if this is implemented wrong. Instead of collaboration it can very quickly devolve into theft and sabotage.
This guy's way of encouraging new ideas from the employees is a good one. But publishing the failures on a website runs the risk of the website becoming a 'wall of shame' instead of being seen as a reward for having presented the idea in the first place. It also runs the risk of having people submit ideas they know are ridiculous just so they can be given whatever reward comes for presenting an idea at all.
But otherwise his head is screwed on straight as far as I can tell. He's right, it's very difficult to create an organization that rewards new ideas. Almost everything in business is set against this. It's why so many big companies 'innovate' by acquisition. And punishing failure makes the problem worse.
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A salesman once screwed up and lost a contract early in Microsoft's history, then appeared before Bill Gates expecting to be fired for his mistake. Instead Bill told him that his job was secure, because (I'm paraphrasing like mad here) he'd learned a valuable lesson and knew an approach that would not work next time, so it was better for the company to keep him rather than hire someone else without this experience.
Not a new idea among clueful bosses, in other words.
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Upper management tends to consider itself enlightened, whereas tech are just low-level functionaries who could not possibly grasp the basics of budgeting and return on investment. They never trust, even their most senior and proven people, to come up with ideas which would benefit the company in the long run. If management can't see the benefit themselves, then there is no benefit and money should not be spent.
However, technicians have an important perspective on the company's needs which can only come from having your head down in the trenches. They see opportunities for gain that upper management cannot see, and will never see, despite their importance and reality. Furthermore, some of their technical agendas can't directly translate to numbers despite their real value.
Therefore, truly enlightened upper management will accept a measure of risk, devoting some development bandwidth to the ideas being put forth by their technicians, even though management doesn't quite understand the value. Its true that some of that money might get wasted, but the gains will more than offset the costs.
Unfortunately, such an attitude requires a level of respect and humility not generally found in corporate executives.