Building a Great Culture — Part 2
I have been thinking for a while now of penning down the 14 thoughts of building a great culture thought out by Jon Gordon — an American Author and Speaker — and finally found some time to start it. So, here goes the first one, not in the order that he had listed but on random choices from his list.
‘Creating a culture where people are afraid to fail leads to failure. Allowing people to fail and learn from failure ultimately leads to success.’
Pain, no doubt, is one of the most important senses we humans possess. It allows us to learn very quickly from our mistakes. Without it, we would not learn through our failures. And, without this failure, we would not learn how to succeed.
More than anything else, defining the term ‘failure’ clearly to our employees is the first step in encouraging them to embrace failure. Else they could not find reasons not to call a mistake a failure. While mistakes imply poor decision-making or not doing the right thing, failure means that something you thought could work did not work. Most businesses view failure as a negative thing. In order to succeed in this global economy, businesses ought to get serious about developing cultural agility. But cultural agility does not come naturally to every business. Though the art of encouraging cultural agility within an organization that is afraid to fail is difficult, it certainly is worth the risk.
It is no rocket science that fear of failure kills innovation and creativity. Fortunately, failure tolerance is a skill that can be developed if employees have a safe environment in which they can practice. Does your workspace have one?