Imprint: Triarchy Press
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Extent: 168pp.
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ISBN: 978-1-908009-30-2
Tags: Risk management, Leadership, Innovation

The Failure Files 
Perspectives on Failure 
Edited by David Hillson
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The Failure Files: 
Perspectives on Failure
Edited by David Hillson

Many of us are afraid of failure and spend our lives trying to avoid it. But society's most high achieving figures would all recognise that failure has been an integral part of their success.

In 2009, the Royal Society of the Arts's Glory of Failure project determined to bring failure into the public sphere, and to acknowledge that doing something wrong is an essential part of achievement.

The Failure Files came out of this project. In the book, experts in a range of business and social fields discuss different aspects of the concept of failure and how it relates to a variety of settings in today's society - including business, education, social history, psychology and the public services. 

In Chapter Nine, entrepreneur specialist Iain Scott interviews leading business figures and discovers among them a reluctance to use 'the F word', because '"failure" for a business is too simplistic and not appropriate. Using it tells you nothing. Without analysis you won't learn. Without trials you don't grow.'

In this vein, the simple story of Edison trying, trying and trying again to make a light bulb illustrates that certain people - entrepreneurs, inventors and explorers among them - make failure into a vital part of the learning process:

'The story goes that he tried ninety-nine filaments to make a light bulb work and ninety-nine were failures. Was he downhearted? No, he claimed that he now knew ninety-nine filaments that would not work. He could discount them, and move on.'

Throughout the essays, the writers frequently return to two categories into which their many different aspects of failure broadly fall: on the one hand, there is a fear of failure that leads to inaction (on a personal level), inflexibility (on an organisational level) or stagnation (on a societal level) and, on the other, there are all those setbacks, losses and rejections that are in fact inevitable risks of any endeavour. The difference between these two categories is a matter of mindset - but a mindset that is contingent upon circumstances and pre-existing structures. The chapters in The Failure Files all explore this complicated web of circumstance and perception that surrounds failure, each taking different perspectives as starting points, including:

  • The way narratives of failure are constructed according to a society's historical value system.
  • 'Life events', such as accidents and disasters, and their consequences.
  • The material and educational experiences that can lead to perceived failure in individuals and communities
  • The media's attitude towards, and public perception of, errors in the public services.

As Susan Greenberg suggests in Chapter Five (which explores how failure is a constructive part of education), the book's central message is that we should consider the contributions failure makes to our working processes, rather than focusing solely on outcomes of failures or viewing them as isolated incidents:

'Perhaps we should abandon the language of policymaking, social constructivism and 'best practice', and look instead to the language of poetics. ... Poetics, which derives from the Greek root poiein, 'to make', gives us permission to attend to the process rather than the finished object. Thus a single word holds within itself a whole world of incompleteness, and hence imagination.'

The Failure Files is a call to open up discussions about how to build appropriate responses to failure into our society, our workplaces and our personal lives.

Readership

This is a book for policy makers, managers, leaders and innovators interested in personal and organisational risk management.

Read more:

The Contributors
About the book
Contents

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