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The failure files on tour-Ipswich, 8 March

As part of a collaboration between the University in Suffolk and a burgeoning RSA group the County, the next failure files on tour is being hosted at the fabulous waterfront building in Ipswich on Tuesday. David Hillson I will be talking. I have persuaded a colleague at the University to be interviewed about one of his own failures too - building on feedback from the Manchester event about sensitivity around talking about your own failures in public, this should set the right tone for other people talking about their failures.

One of the themes I will pick up on in my talk about government is the institution getting in the way of exploiting opportunities, being able to take risks. This builds on two things I have learnt from the project so far: Robert and Kirsty's writings about learned helplessness. That experiences of hierarchy and being told off for trying something different that shakes the institutional core get in the way of people wanting to try again. Secondly the point about visibility in the dimensions of failure: a think it was worse in the civil service, but I can still be fairly invisible as a local government officer, and it is the norm to stay more inward facing, which gets in the way of accountability and talking about and so learning from failure.

Tags: helplessness, ipswich, learned, visibility

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ian Lewis on March 3, 2011 at 13:08

Hi, Esmee, and all involved, well done on the Glory of Failure front. I wish you a fair wind.

In 2000 the first meeting of 'Campaign for Adventure - Risk and Enterprise in Society' took a creative stick to sad and debilitating idea of risk being bad. We had some fine speakers, including Prince Philip ('For society, the risk is not that we take too many risks, but that we do not take enough risks.'), Roger Putnam ('Live is best lived in a spirit of exploration, adventure and enterprise.'), and Libby Purves' fine article in The Times concerning our colourful ex-MP:

One thing rarely mentioned is that Mr Öpik is he is one of the three chairmen and founding fathers of the All-party Parliamentary Group on risk and adventure in society (ARISc); and involved in that splendid body, the Campaign for Adventure. With Julian Brazier and Derek Wyatt he put together ARISc a few years ago: the intention was to challenge and rectify the increasingly risk-averse, litigious, timid public culture. It was not only the school trips and outdoor education that were withering under the cold blast of blame and the expectation of unachievable total safety: it took on the wider question of risk and enterprise and creativity being hampered by a crippling emphasis on regulation. It invited business leaders and creatives to back it, which they did in their droves. The campaign has flourished, held conferences, got the Prime Minister sending supportive messages and promoted Mr Brazier’s Private Member’s Bill, which was the spiritual father of the Government’s own Compensation Act, passed this summer. The Act, while not perfect, usefully tips the balance away from a fear of liability and towards recognition of the positive usefulness of certain activities: for instance, a court considering a liability claim may now “have regard” to whether the outcome might “prevent a desirable activity from being undertaken at all” or discourage leaders and volunteers.

The many supporters of the campaign (www.campaignforadventure.org) naturally also support Glory of Failure and we wish you all well. Although, as with 'risk', 'failure' might also take a little time to change from a negative to a positive, but such things can be done. The next meeting of ARISc is in May, and UK Adventure Week is from the 1st-8th May.

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