Why You Should Share Your Failure Stories
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫, 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬. 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬?
Back when I was with Yayasan Hasanah, I had the opportunity to develop the Foundation's annual reports. Each year required me to scour the net for hours, researching concepts and themes for that year.
Out of all my findings, one annual report caught my eye and stayed with me. It was an antithesis of your typical annual report.
There were no success stories in this annual report. Only failed encounters, from the first page to the last.
The failure stories are diverse and colourful. Each page is a different story contributed by staff from various departments in the organisation. From the CEO to the ground staff, their failure stories were made public.
Readers from different experiences will easily find the stories relatable and possibly even trigger spine-chilling cold sweat flashbacks, reminding you of the time when things didn’t go as planned.
The type of failures in the report can be split into two types: personal and organisational failures. Personal failures may look like:
❗️Shouldering responsibilities alone and not asking for help
❗️Assigning unclear responsibilities to team members for an upcoming event
❗️Building company solutions and processes without considering the needs of the staff
Whereas organisational failures include:
❗️Evolving a simple, straight-forward event into one that's overly ambitious
❗️Embarking on a project without consulting the beneficiaries and assuming their needs
❗️The Executive Team's over-expectations to deliver new projects leading to organisation budget cuts
Sound familiar?
Instead of hiding mistakes, the report acknowledged, embraced and openly discussed its flaws. It created a new and fresh narrative, shifting from "Hey, we have our sh*t together" to "Hey, we messed up too, and here’s how we plan to fix it".
The goal is to normalise mistakes, learn from them and accept that they are often precursors to success. Each story concludes with learning lessons, where contributors reflect on what went wrong and what they could have done better as individuals and as an organisation.
The compiled mistakes provide key insights, akin to a data collection exercise on what went wrong and how to avoid them. This can be powerful for the sector to grow and evoke moments of "Hey, we made the same mistake too!" among organisations, accepting the reality that mistakes happen, and learn from one another.
So, would you consider producing your failure report? What do you think is stopping your organisation from producing one? Let’s talk!
