RSA Glory of Failure Education Theme

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kieron Smith on January 24, 2010 at 20:28

Hi Jonathan

Interesting group. Think you might be interested in this Pecha Kucha presented by Peter Collingridge, an associate of mine, at the London Book Fair on the subject of Failure (specifically Beckett's incitement of 'Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.')

http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2009/10/21/fail-harder-talk-at-londo...

Best

Kieron

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Jewell on January 24, 2010 at 20:31

Excellent - thanks for letting me know about this. I'll check it out and pass it the round the ning and other groups - are you a member of our ning group? What is your professional role? And how did you come across the book - I'm wondering if it was work-related?

Jonathan


Kieron Smith said:

Hi Jonathan

Interesting group. Think you might be interested in this Pecha Kucha presented by Peter Collingridge, an associate of mine, at the London Book Fair on the subject of Failure (specifically Beckett's incitement of 'Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.')

http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2009/10/21/fail-harder-talk-at-londo...

Best

Kieron

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Jewell on January 24, 2010 at 20:33

Thanks - this is excellent: how did you come across it? Was it in relation to your professional role, or purely through a contact? And is that contact a fellow who can join us?

Hope you are well.

Kieron Smith said:

Hi Jonathan

Interesting group. Think you might be interested in this Pecha Kucha presented by Peter Collingridge, an associate of mine, at the London Book Fair on the subject of Failure (specifically Beckett's incitement of 'Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.')

http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2009/10/21/fail-harder-talk-at-londo...

Best

Kieron

Permalink Reply by Kieron Smith on January 24, 2010 at 20:43

Peter is Managing Director of Apt Studio (http://aptstudio.com/) and a contact of mine in the book industry (I'm MD of The Book Depository http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/) I'm happy to forward him a contact should you wish, not sure if he's a Fellow or not.

Best

Kieron
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/kieron

Jonathan Jewell said:

Thanks - this is excellent: how did you come across it? Was it in relation to your professional role, or purely through a contact? And is that contact a fellow who can join us?

Hope you are well.

Kieron Smith said:

Hi Jonathan

Interesting group. Think you might be interested in this Pecha Kucha presented by Peter Collingridge, an associate of mine, at the London Book Fair on the subject of Failure (specifically Beckett's incitement of 'Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.')

http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2009/10/21/fail-harder-talk-at-londo...

Best

Kieron

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Jewell on January 24, 2010 at 21:02

Yes, that would be helpful - could you send me it by personal message, or ask Peter if he is interested in getting involved. He doesn't have to be a fellow to be involved in some way because it is really about societal change as a lot of things are. But to really engage with him, it would be great if he was. If he wants to offer anything, we'll be very willing to have him on-board.

Let me know if you want to be more practically involved too.

Thanks again - that sort of stuff is really useful to us.

Kieron Smith said:

Peter is Managing Director of Apt Studio (http://aptstudio.com/) and a contact of mine in the book industry (I'm MD of The Book Depository http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/) I'm happy to forward him a contact should you wish, not sure if he's a Fellow or not.

Best

Kieron
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/kieron

Jonathan Jewell said:

Thanks - this is excellent: how did you come across it? Was it in relation to your professional role, or purely through a contact? And is that contact a fellow who can join us?

Hope you are well.

Kieron Smith said:

Hi Jonathan

Interesting group. Think you might be interested in this Pecha Kucha presented by Peter Collingridge, an associate of mine, at the London Book Fair on the subject of Failure (specifically Beckett's incitement of 'Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.')

http://aptstudio.com/timesemit/2009/10/21/fail-harder-talk-at-londo...

Best

Kieron

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Jewell on January 26, 2010 at 16:27

'The Glory of Failure' is really a provocative statement to get people to think about it, disagree with it (probably and hopefully to make it memorable. In that sense I hope it's been a success by your posting. I think most of us appreciate that with all the great things that come out of it, failure is painful and there's a lot to hold it accountable for in society.

Your quote is excellent and really sums up what this theme really is about: 'it's much more important for teachers to be skilled at working with failure than with success.' - I hope you won't mind you quoting you on that (I'll attribute it to you!). Really I couldn't sum up my thinking on this better at this early stage in development of the work. This is my experience as a secondary school teacher, in further education and in higher education - and of course, in more informal teaching in life generally (but that moves into Mitch's thread!).

That you say: 'whereas a relatively small number of young people experience success every day in every classroom they enter.' partly explains why I think this theme is so important and why it is one of the 'Big 4' for the campaign, alongside culture, organisations and individual life failure - why not work upstream?

My view is that we need to help build emotional and intellectual sophistication in people so they are no so crippled by perceived failure that they can't learn from it, and they are not so detached from it's emotional content so as for them not be impassioned to use that learning. Just my thoughts, other people may disagree - but again, it's a start point.

I'm really glad you joined on this one. It is perhaps me, more than anyone who is keen to see how this group develops. And I think you and Kieron have set us off have set us off to an excellent start!

Maureen Wolloshin said:

hello Jontahan,
it's much more important for teachers to be skilled at working with failure than with success. It happens every day in every classroom, whereas a relatively small number of young people experience success every day in every classroom they enter. While I think that to call failure glorious is over egging it a little, it is undoubtedly the case that failure needs to be far more socially acceptable if we are to use it effectively as a learning tool. I'm interested to see how this group moves this forward.

Permalink Reply by David Jennings on January 27, 2010 at 20:15

During their first 15 years, our children spend 1/2 of their waking time at school. As a society, many of our cultural attitudes and morays originate at our educational institutions, and so it is there we must look enable the risk-tolerance and innovative spirit which is natural in children.

Hmmm, not sure if I agree with the premises of this argument. Instead of treating school as a frame within which to explore failure, I'd draw the frame wider -- to include the other half of waking time as well -- and put school within that. Schools fail too, you know -- and not just the 'bad' ones. (Some would argue that failure is built into the structure of schooling.)

My school was excellent at getting me good exam grades. And, yes, since the age of 15 I've defined my cultural attitudes and mores in relation to those (militaristic, petty disciplinarian, stiff upper lip etc etc) that the school espoused: mine are the exact opposite. That hasn't always been helpful to my advancement, but the simple pleasure of sticking two fingers up at small-minded authoritarians has at least given me three decades of solace.

If schools provide a landscape for learning or developing traits like experimentation and resilience (assuming those are the kinds of things useful for dealing with failure), then they do so more by accident than by design.

So let's not rely on schools to deliver this moral and pastoral support, because I suspect we'll be heading for a fall if we do.

Can we imagine activities and projects, which might incorporate what goes on in school without being enclosed by it, that would encourage helpful traits? I might even suggest that the ability to evaluate critically established/orthodox frameworks for measuring success and failure could be one of those traits.

Jonathan, you're probably going to ask me now for examples of what I mean... I'll come back to you in a year or two.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Jewell on January 27, 2010 at 22:15

Some really good points, David: glad you joined us - start working on those examples.

I'm thinking we need to consider some of the cross-over with our organisations and culture themes,. I will mull it over.

What do other people think?

Jonathan

David Jennings said:

During their first 15 years, our children spend 1/2 of their waking time at school. As a society, many of our cultural attitudes and morays originate at our educational institutions, and so it is there we must look enable the risk-tolerance and innovative spirit which is natural in children.

Hmmm, not sure if I agree with the premises of this argument. Instead of treating school as a frame within which to explore failure, I'd draw the frame wider -- to include the other half of waking time as well -- and put school within that. Schools fail too, you know -- and not just the 'bad' ones. (Some would argue that failure is built into the structure of schooling.)

My school was excellent at getting me good exam grades. And, yes, since the age of 15 I've defined my cultural attitudes and mores in relation to those (militaristic, petty disciplinarian, stiff upper lip etc etc) that the school espoused: mine are the exact opposite. That hasn't always been helpful to my advancement, but the simple pleasure of sticking two fingers up at small-minded authoritarians has at least given me three decades of solace.

If schools provide a landscape for learning or developing traits like experimentation and resilience (assuming those are the kinds of things useful for dealing with failure), then they do so more by accident than by design.

So let's not rely on schools to deliver this moral and pastoral support, because I suspect we'll be heading for a fall if we do.

Can we imagine activities and projects, which might incorporate what goes on in school without being enclosed by it, that would encourage helpful traits? I might even suggest that the ability to evaluate critically established/orthodox frameworks for measuring success and failure could be one of those traits.

Jonathan, you're probably going to ask me now for examples of what I mean... I'll come back to you in a year or two.

Permalink Reply by Kieron Smith on March 4, 2010 at 22:17

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=338219969178

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Jewell on March 8, 2010 at 10:16

I love that quote too.

I do think it is right that there is plenty of failure out there already to learn from, and I think it is sensible to start there.

And I agree too that being able to recognise failure is important, in itself, as a tool. I think the offence of 'wrongful trading' in insolvency is a good example. As this extract from the Insolvency Act, 1986 goes:

Wrongful trading occurs when the directors "knew, or ought to have concluded, that there was no reasonable prospect of avoiding insolvent liquidation" [italics added]

Here, if you don't spot 'failure', even if you weren't knowingly 'failing' you can end up with disqualification and other penalties. So recognising failure is something we do need to work on building.

On the other hand, I also think there is room for learning in structured environments. This is one of the ideas behind our development of the failure labs handbook (have a look in that discussion thread for more of a definition). The basic sense is that people are put in situations where they can not technically succeed (although preferably this is not immediately apparent).

I think there are a number of good things about this approach:

Consequences of not failing

1) People will fail (and if they don't, they'll win the Nobel prize, which isn't a bad thing).

Joint reference

2) People can discuss their differences in approach to the same problem, and their learning associated with it
3) People can discuss their similarities too - fixing some aspects allow much clearer analogues to be identified

Inevitability

4) Since failure is inevitable, it may be easier to be dispassionate about 'having failed' - i.e. it is not a failing in itself - which can help people concentrate on the intellectual aspects
5) I think, depending on how the task is managed, also do the opposite, i.e. work with the emotional aspects that come up with failure and how that sophistication can be used to manage failure

Control

5) It's possible to control many different aspects in a way the real world doesn't allow: depending on what you decide to fix and change, you can see different

Motivation

6) I hope it can be fun


And that is why, I think, there is a value in 'wargaming' or simulating failure, in the same way battle planning or planning for major incidents can be helpful, rather than waiting until the war starts or the bomb goes off.

And I'm not sure your point is pedantic at all. In fact, to me, this is really at the focus of the work and you put it much better than I did. Perhaps the learning from my failing to characterise it as you do is the recognition that I am under-ambitious about the potential of this work. I think the difference is semantic.

If you call people spastics, morons, losers, wasters, idiots, subnormals, etc. (and of course, failures) to me that is more than just political incorrectness. These terms are pejorative, they emphasise the weakness of people and they hurt. That is not the best way to get quality learning, in fact, what benefit does anyone get from being called derogatory names. By changing the taboo around failure, by looking at it in a different way, it does (as you say) change how it is regarded. And you can start pushing out the unhelpful stuff - trying to explain away things to others, not admitting things to yourself, trying to re-write history or spinning press releases - and concentrating on what is important. This is the basis on which I tried to frame what I was saying when I wrote the original phrase, but it doesn't go far enough, you are right.

And I think you go a lot further in your reframing, which is great and I think develops this campaign further.

I think the public relations criticisms of Obama in respect of the failure of the intelligence services recently, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbrA1jj7EaQ is an interesting example of how people react when someone admits to failure. A lot of politicians actually saw his admission of failure under his administration as a gross error of judgement, but I believe the intent was to open up the discussion to try to improve things.

A similar problem in the UK might be the admission of healthcare professionals to mistakes they make. With an increasingly litigious society, the media's characterisation of the state of hospitals, and performance targets, is it a surprise there is a 'blame culture' that gets in the way of people and organisations learning from failure in the healthcare system and by doing so, from actually making things better. You then spend lots of money fighting resistance throughout your organisation and increasing the motivation to cover things up.

Changing the language, for me, changes the problem. The problem (simplified) goes from 'who's wrong and needs to be punished?', to 'what do we need to do learn from this?'. In that way, it changes everything.

Final point, this work isn't about containment, mitigation and contingency, as risk professionals talk about. Sure, you might want or need to contain the impact of failure, but ultimately failure of some kind is inevitable and the topic is worth addressing head-on.

So, we need more failure, not because we actively want to make it (although, as I say above, we might want to with a specific purpose in mind), but because essentially failure, like success is born of trying, and so by more trying we will get yes, more failure, but also, more success.

Mike Amos-Simpson said:

I like that film Kieron, I like Maureens quote too "it's much more important for teachers to be skilled at working with failure than with success" I think that kind of recognition (& understanding) is more valuable than seeking to manufacture failure ie. recognising failure already occurs.
"Deal with failure" sounds very negative whereas "glory of failure" I think really makes you think differently about how failure is regarded.
For example changing:

"overcome failure and help young people to deal with failure both emotionally and intellectually"

to

"capitalise on the opportunities of failure and support young people to understand their emotional and intellectual responses to failure"

sorry to be pedantic ;-)