The Degrees of Failure

If someone encountes failure, it's either their fault or it is not. Right?

Is it really that simple?

Here are reasons for failure, from most to least blameworthy.

Everyone you meet can be a teacher: let's adopt a mindset of continuous learning from every interaction.

1️⃣ Deviance: An individual chooses to violate a prescribed process or practice.

2️⃣ Inattention: An individual inadvertently deviates from specifications by diverting their attention.

3️⃣ Lack of ability: An individual knows they don't have the actual skills, conditions or training to execute the job, but engage nonetheless.

4️⃣ Process inadequacy: A very competent individual adheres to a prescribed but faulty or incomplete process.

5️⃣ Task challenge: An individual faces a task too difficult to be executed reliably every time.

6️⃣ Process complexity: A process composed of many elements breaks down when it encounters novel interactions.

7️⃣ Uncertainty: A lack of clarity about future events causes people to take seemingly reasonable actions that produce undesirable results.

8️⃣ Hypothesis testing: An experiment conducted to prove that an idea or design will succeed fails instead.

9️⃣ Exploratory testing: An experiment conducted to expand knowledge and investigate a possibility leads to an undesirable result.

While the above is far from an exact science, it reminds us that things can go wrong for a variety of reasons. It's all too easy to assign blame, while the truth is necessarily messy and grey. And punishing someone's whose well-executed experiment failed is not just a bad idea, it's also counterproductive.

Wish you a great week ahead with lots of wins and permissible misses ☺️.

* Unfortunately, I don't have the source anymore to share with you where it came from. Likely a book or article. Apologies.