Those who fail perform better in long run, study shows

WASHINGTON - People and organisations crippled by failures do much better in the long run.

That is because they learn more from their failures than their successes and retain the lessons lifelong.

Professor Vinit Desai, who led the study at the University of Colorado Denver Business School, said: “We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years.”

“Managers may fire people or turn over the entire workforce while they should be treating the failure as a learning opportunity,” he said, according to a Colorado statement, reports the Telegraph.

He researched companies and organisations that launch satellites, rockets and shuttles into space, where failures are hard to conceal.

Researchers said they discovered little “significant organisational learning from success”.

Desai compared the flights of the space shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger. During the 2002 Atlantis flight, a piece of insulation broke off and damaged the left solid rocket booster but did not impede the mission or the programme. There was little follow-up or investigation.

The Challenger was launched next and another piece of insulation broke off. This time the shuttle and its seven-member crew were destroyed.

The disaster prompted the suspension of shuttle flights and led to a major investigation, resulting in 29 recommended changes to prevent future calamities.

The difference in response in the two cases, Desai said, came down to this: The Atlantis was considered a success and the Challenger a failure.

“Whenever you have a failure it causes a company to search for solutions and when you search for solutions it puts you as an executive in a different mindset, a more open mindset,” said Desai.

He said the airline industry is one sector of the economy that has learned from failures, at least when it comes to safety.

“Despite crowded skies, airlines are incredibly reliable,” he said. “The number of failures is minuscule.”

“And past research has shown that older airlines, those with more experience in failure, have a lower number of accidents.”

“The most significant implication of this study … is that organisational leaders should neither ignore failures nor stigmatise those involved with them,” he concluded in the Academy of Management Journal.