How afraid is your company of failure?
Of course businesses ultimately have to success to survive, but is your organisation so scared of failure today that it will dampen future success?
Silicon Valley in the USA is perhaps the best example of ‘not being afraid to fail’. How many of the world’s top entrepreneurs did not fail before they achieved success, not once, not twice but many times over? The draw card that pulls entrepreneurial activity forward is the prize at the other end: success. But you won’t taste that if you are not willing to experiment.
How free are people in your organisation to experiment? How free are they to innovate, in the knowledge that if they fail, and you pull the plug fast, it is not the end of the world?
Successful companies cultivate acceptance towards risk tolerance and allow innovation to foster in all corners of the business. Do yours?
Successful leaders allow their employees to dream, innovate and, yes, sometimes fail. Do you feed their hunger for eventual success, or do you break it down? What does it take to foster a culture of innovation, with the option to fail, in an organisation? How do you manage it?
As a senior business leader, how might you reinvent your organisation, your team, and even yourself to grant permission to fail as part of the business culture?
1) Shorten the cycle time – don’t give them a carte blanche. Ensure the experimentation period is long enough to measure results and benchmark, but short enough not to be too detrimental to the company.
2) Share the lessons – be open about your projects with the entire company, routes to success may be in unexpected places
3) Give encouragement – just because one idea didn’t work out it doesn’t mean others won’t. Learn, measure, take stock and iterate.
Every moment is an opportunity to reshape the future.
If you want an opportunity to reshape your future, why not join colleagues like yourself in the magazine media industry who are tasked with implementing strategy and shaping the future for their business, by joining them on a unique and highly-rewarding management programme, FIPP’s Executive Programme for Innovation and Change (EPIC).
EPIC has been designed to address the specific challenges of the magazine media industry and find tools and strategies that will help you to foster innovation within your company and accelerate your brands across a variety of platforms and extensions.
EPIC has been designed with the brilliant minds at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. Taking place in July, its faculty will run the different modules of programme, on their executive campus just outside Oxford.
During the course of the week you will
• Learn how to adapt for tomorrow’s changing demands
• Find ways in which to nurture innovation within your company
• Discover new solutions to those problems that are difficult to pin down
• Enhance your leadership skills
• Engage with your peers from around the world
Book before the end of March to make the most of the early bird rate.
FIPP member early bird rate*
Tuition fees £8,895, plus mandatory accommodation and catering £1,100 (Total: £9,995)
FIPP member standard rate
Tuition fees £9,895, plus mandatory accommodation and catering £1,100 (Total: £10,995)
Non-member early bird rate*
Tuition fees £11,895, plus mandatory accommodation and catering £1,100 (Total: £12,995)
Non-member standard rate
Tuition fees £13,195, plus mandatory accommodation and catering £1,100 (Total: £14,295)
*Early bird rate deadline – extended until 31 March 2015
Double discount
Our belief is that two heads are better than one. So if two people come from the same division*, FIPP will cover the accommodation and catering charges for both of you (saving a further £2,200, excluding VAT).
*both delegates must be from the same subsidiary for this offer to apply.
Contact Christine Huntingford for more information.
