Is a No Failure culture stifling your business?

By Ruth Brown · 15 November 2022

“Do you know why WD-40 is called WD-40?” said my husband the other day. I thought about it briefly and admitted I didn’t.

“It’s because it took forty attempts to get the water dispersing formula right. Imagine if they’d just given up after a few goes?”

His point was a pertinent one. We had just been discussing the state of British politics and how we couldn’t keep up with the resignations, sackings, re-shuffles, U-turns and general chaos. I said that being a politician was like being a Premier League football manager these days. A few losses too many and you are unceremoniously sacked.

Moving away from politics and reflecting more widely, it worries me how we are becoming as a society. I hear it said that young people expect things instantly. They are the TikTok/Amazon Prime generation. But aren’t we all guilty of this? We are all becoming more impatient and intolerant. If a delivery doesn’t come next day, we tut. If a website takes a few seconds too long to load, we roll our eyes.

We tell children that it’s ok to fail and make mistakes. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again. We talk about being resilient – dusting yourself off and starting over. But are we as a society role modelling that behaviour? Or do they see people making errors and being hounded out of their jobs? Abused. Criticised. Torn Down.

Is this intolerance of mistakes and the expectation that everything and everyone should be perfect first time also creeping into how we run our businesses? If people are afraid of failing what are the consequences of that?

As employers, we desperately need people who are creative and talented – the ones who are prepared to stick their heads above the parapet, to break the mould and take risks. These are the people that find better ways of doing things, invent new products and services, they innovate, find efficiencies and create the competitive advantage you want for your company. We need to build a culture where people feel supported and that they have the freedom to challenge the status quo, explore and experiment. Yes, they may make mistakes and yes, they will probably suffer a few failures but the rewards and successes will far outweigh those. As Robert F Kennedy said: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” 

The history of human endeavour is littered with spectacular failures. Think of our efforts with regards to flight…the Wright brothers didn’t just build a perfect plane first time and take off into the sunset. They crashed countless times but they never gave up.

Failing is fine so long as you adopt an agile approach – fail fast and learn quicker.

There are many inspiring quotes about failure but here’s one I will leave you with from J.M. Barrie: “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.”

If you would like some support to review or improve your organisational culture, then please get in touch with us here at ARK. We have skilled consultants (many of whom have become successful by learning from failure!) who can help you today. Call us on 0121 5153831 or email marketing@arkconsultancy.co.uk – we’d love to have a chat.