Learning from failure

Some years ago, I wrote a post called Blogging About Failure. I believe that we can learn a lot from failure - or, to put it less strongly, from those occasions when things didn't go as well as we had hoped or expected.

Somewhat tongue in cheek, I described that post, back in 2013, as the first in an occasional series.  Well, here is the second.

I am not claiming, of course, that everything else between then and now has gone as well as it possibly could; but there are some situations one cannot blog about, as they involve others who might be identifiable.  And further,  I don't choose to wash all my dirty linen in public...

I am keenly aware that I have blogged a lot, recently, about successes with the Thinking Environment (see posts with that tag for examples), and even with questions about it, at the critical, intellectual level. So for balance, I thought I would describe an occasion a while ago when it did not work as well as I had hoped.

I introduced the approach on one of the year-long programmes I am involved in facilitating, with a view to including some Time to Think in pairs or trios at the end of each day, to enable participants to reflect on the day's learning and decide what to do with it.  But, whilst some found it really useful, others did not.

So what had gone wrong, given how different this was from my usual experience?

I think that the problem lay with me. In introducing the idea, I think I had gone quite quickly, giving only a fairly sketchy explanation, as I wanted to get people into the experience quickly.

This was fuelled, perhaps, by a degree of complacency: this approach had always worked with other groups, so I was confident that it would do so again. So perhaps I was a little too confident, which, along with a sense of urgency, undermined my usual commitment to gain full understanding of, and commitment to, the process before starting.

What was interesting was that afterwards, I asked them to line up in the room, to indicate how useful they had found their thinking session. They ranged from fairly low, to very high.  Then I asked them to use the other dimension of the room, to indicate how closely they had followed the instructions and kept to the rules, rather than simply have a conversation.  That was very revealing: we got a strong diagonal.  That is, those who had stuck most closely to the structure had got the most out of it; those who had deviated the most, had got the least.

Which was valuable feedback: what it suggests to me is that the problem lay not with the approach, but with the way in which I had set it up. I had clearly failed either to make the rules sufficiently clear; or to convey the reasons for following them, at least on this occasion as an experiment, with sufficient compulsion.

So a reminder to myself not to get complacent, but to prepare both myself and then others adequately, if I wish to get the best from a practical session.

Blogging about failure

Something I've been thinking about recently - and a stimulating conversation with Andrew Derrington brought it back to mind today - is sharing reflections about failure.

I am a great believer that we can learn a lot from things going wrong. Many years ago, I used to convene meetings of AMED in the North East. Far and away the most successful meeting I can remember was one where we invited members to share their greatest training disasters.

To their credit, members rose to the challenge, and we heard some hilarious stories; and there was a high degree of resonance: in most cases, we agreed, we had all been there. And in discussing our disasters, and each others' perceptions of where things had gone wrong, we all learned a great deal.

So I would like to blog about failures I have had; but there are a few problems.

One is that I don't have that many. That's not a problem in other contexts, of course, but if I want to blog about failures, it would be useful to have a few to choose from.

The second, and related to the first, is that the one or two things that have gone wrong still hurt, even though they may be some time ago.  Moreover, and this is the point, they may still be sore for my client; and that brings me to the most difficult issue. These are not just my stories: others are involved, and almost inevitably, if I am to reflect honestly on them, that may involve criticism of them.

Of course, I can anonymise them, and change details, etc to protect people or organisations from being identified, but my fear then is that other clients may think I am writing about them, and viewing as a failure something they (and indeed I) don't see as one...

The other concern, of course, is that by writing publicly about my failures, I may put off current or prospective clients  or collaborators.  However, I think  any client who wants to work with someone who claims never to have got anything wrong is probably not a client I'd want to work with, so I think I can take that risk.

So... (deep breath) here goes. No1 in a (very) occasional series.

Some time ago, a former boss - let's call him Paul - in an organisation I'd worked in, and who knew I was interested in writing, took me out for lunch at a Greek restaurant.

To be honest, I  was flattered. I had only set up the business a short while previously, and was naturally keen for new business. So after a few retsinas, Paul broached the business part of the conversation. There was a need to train managers in the organisation to write more clearly and succinctly. So he had commissioned a specialist consultancy to develop an Authorship Skills programme. Now he needed someone to deliver the programme. Here he laid on the flattery a bit, saying that the specialists had developed a great programme, but he wasn't convinced their training skills were anything like as good as mine; though they were cheap.  So if I were prepared to match their price (which was lower than my day rate) the work was mine.

It was, he assured me, a way back in to working for the organisation, and in future, naturally, they would pay my usual rates, but on this occasion... And then there was the volume of work...

So I ended up running poorly-designed workshops for managers who didn't want to be there, and felt patronised to boot, for cut rates, in an area that was outside my core competence.  Unsurprisingly, I didn't enjoy these, I don't think they really addressed the issue, and I was never invited back to do any other work for that organisation.

But I learned a number of valuable lessons, early in my freelance career:

• Don't drink when negotiating a contract
• Don't drink with clients you don't really trust
• Don't listen to flattery
• Don't say yes immediately to things you are unsure of - take the time to reflect
• Don't cut price for the promise of future business
• Don't agree to run programmes designed by someone else sight unseen (though I have breached that since, which may be the subject of the next in this series)
• Don't work outside your core expertise without explicitly discussing that with your client
• Don't assume your client has undertaken good (or indeed any) diagnosis
• Don't agree to sheep-dip programmes where everyone is compelled to attend regardless of need

The last two points underpin most of the rest, in this instance: these workshops were always going to be tough, because the need they addressed was ill-defined, only perceived by some senior people, and not recognised by the victims of the process.



What brought all this back to my mind was hearing about Andrew Derrington's workshops, targetted at academics writing research proposals.  Here the need is specific, identified and acknowledged; and Andrew clearly has the expertise and experience to deliver them.

The contrast could scarcely be greater.

A Story of Failure... The Offstage Character

I've posted a few examples of the Multistory approach working.  Here's an example of it failing - I am always wary of any approach that seems to be a panacea, and I also believe we can learn a lot from failures.

One failure I learned a lot from was in a social work setting, where a new manager had been appointed over a team involved in some quite creative approaches.  The senior practitioner was unhappy with the financial constraints suddenly placed upon her and her team; but that was the very job the new manager had been appointed to do.  The relationship quickly deteriorated and by the time I was asked to help, the two were not prepared to speak to each other.  The boss was also involved, and I included him in the process.  However what I failed to pick up in the early stages was the key role of an off-stage character, who used to share an office with the new manager, and who was still very influential with her.  

I managed to get all three individuals to the stage where I - and they - believed that it might be valuable to sit down in the same room and explore their stories.  However, the manager, who had shown some signs of movement and willingness to discuss by the end of our one-to-one conversation, now dug her heels in and refused to listen or to open up and discuss here real perceptions.  I later learned that her friend and old office-mate had spent some time with her advising her not to give an inch, as the boss and the practitioner would both take a mile if she did.  Had I realised earlier the degree to which this off-stage character was actively involved in the dispute, I should have included her in the process.  In the event, we got nowhere, and the two people who had been prepared to move a little felt very bruised and abused.  The manager was eventually re-assigned to another area: most organisations’ default response to difficult relationship issues.