Recently there has been some discussion in the world of philanthropy about failure. We thought we would gather a few different viewpoints on failure and learning from both the field of philanthropy and from other sectors. Here is a collection of ideas about failure –whether you learn more from it than success,how you learn from it,how organizations look at it,and the importance of failure in achieving eventual success.
Let us know your thoughts on how failure connects to learning in the comments below. And if you have more resources on failure and learning,please post those as well.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Sir Winston Churchill
- Following Up on Failure –from The Chronicle of Philanthropy regarding learning from failure
- Failing Forward - posted on both Lucy Bernholz’s Philanthropy 2173 and Alliance Magazine’s blog
- Exploring Failure –Stanford Social Innovation Review
- Embracing Failure at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference
- Strategies for Learning from Failure –an article behind the wall at Harvard Business Review or you can watch the 12-minute interview for free
- No Fear of Failure - a book capturing interviews with leaders from business,philanthropy,politics and educaiton about how they approached crucial career defining moments
- How You Learn More from Success than Failure - a Scientific American article about how the brain processes mistakes
- How the Mighty Fall:What We Can Learn from Failure –a Bloomberg BusinessWeek slide show of examples
In another article that discusses “failure,”Marilyn Darling and I (of Signet Research and Consulting) recently co-authored “Lessons (Net Yet) Learned,”which will be in the next issue of Foundation Review.
In it,we challenge the notion that learning is complete when “lessons learned”are captured and disseminated;we examine what it really takes to transform a lesson from past grantmaking into improved practice (and results).
We examine three factors that contribute to the gap between a “lesson (not yet) learned”and improved results and offer a logic model for “Lessons (Truly) Learned.”We dig into the activities most critical to recognizing those pitfalls and leverage points that we can adjust for improved results.
–Jillaine Smith,Senior Associate
Signet Research &Consulting