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.'"

Comments

The Beatings Will Continue...

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Morale Improves.

Better phrasing

[mseeger]

What they don't do is "rewarding failure". They hand out incentives for trying. Subtle differences between those two....

Re:Better phrasing

[smpoole7]

> They hand out incentives for trying. Subtle differences ...

Correct. Good point.

If you want to find a miserable employee, just look for the guy or gal who's working for a moron who thinks everything can be accomplished with a bullwhip. Anyone who's a decent manager knows that it's stick ... AND carrot. And it has to be sincere, too. I appreciate my assistants and try to tell them that on a regular basis. And yeah (answering someone else's post here), they DO appreciate mentions and little letters from the company president. If it's a larger company, a little recognition goes a long way.

I encourage my guys to be creative. And here's the most important thing: I have a rock-solid rule that I beat into their heads. "If you screw up, if you break something or make a mistake, as long as it's an honest mistake, come admit it and we'll fix it." Now, if you're horsing around or slacking off an break something, I'm gonna hammer you. But if it's an honest screw-up, we'll fix it and move on.

My brother used to do food industry, and he told me the best story I've ever heard about that: fast food joint. Busy, busy, employees scrambling behind the counter. An employee drops a couple of burgers and the manager screams at her. A few minutes later, she drops something else, he threatens to fire her.

So ... sure enough, it's crazy, everyone is scrambling ... she drops something else. Some fries go on the floor. She looks around in a panic, notes that the manager isn't watching .. . .. . and quickly picks the fries off the floor AND PUTS THEM BACK IN THE SERVING BIN.

I've never forgotten that story. Being the PHP From Doom every time an employee makes a mistake simply means that they'll start covering them up ... and so you've now got a computer running with an obvious bug, or a microwave link with a broken connector that's taped back together (true stories both). And you don't even know it!

Carrot AND stick. And it has to be sincere, too. Not something that you force yourself to learn.

Alan Kay

[TheRaven64]

Alan Kay is always a good source of quotes (including, paraphrase 'I said that 30 years ago! Why does no one ever listen to me?'), but one in particular is relevant here:

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.

Real rewards

[pmontra]

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.

failure as a teaching method

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Risk some capital

[Anonymous Coward]

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.