Many organizations engaged in Agile transformations at scale struggle with failure. In this session, Ewan O'Leary introduces some thinking and a model or two to lessen the pain of failure. Increasing organizational agility requires an increased tolerance of failure. Responding to failures is responding to change over following a plan.

1. Copyright © 2014 SolutionsIQ, Inc. All rights reserved.
It’s OK to Fail!
Creating a Safe Space to Learn from Failure
Ewan O’Leary
Agile Coach

2. Who Am I?
‘I don’t have all of the answers, but I know some of the questions
to ask’

3. Why Are We Here?
#Fail

4. Pithy Quotes
Success is not final, failure is not
fatal: it is the courage to continue
that counts. – Winston Churchill
Success is going from failure to
failure without any loss of
enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill
(Yeah, he failed. A lot.)
Everybody want safety (safety love) –
Alex Ebert, Edward Sharpe and the
Magnetic Zeroes, Man on Fire

5. What Failure Means (Mostly)
Silent mind map exercise
1. Get into teams of 3-5
2. Put the word ‘Failure’ in the middle of your flipchart
3. Write down everything that comes to mind on the topic as
you free associate with your team
4. Take 5 minutes to map your input IN SILENCE
5. Once we’re done, we’ll walk the walls for 5 minutes, and do
a read out.
6. The objective of this exercise is to desensitize you and your
teams to the idea or concept of failure.

6. Effective vs Ineffective Failure
Ineffective Effective Failure
Reduces team motivation Increases team motivation
Reduces courage Reinforces courage
Reduces sharing of commitments Increases sharing of
commitments
Weakens team identity Strengthens team identity
Increases apathy Decreases apathy
Reduces trust Increases trust
Dysfunctional behavior becomes
more damaging
Dysfunctional behavior increases
learning
Invites management control Promotes self-organization

7. Growth Mindset
© Carol Dweck

8. A Spectrum of Failure
Inattention
Lack of
Ability
Process and
Inadequacy
Task
Challenge
Process
Complexity
Uncertainty
Hypothesis
Testing
Exploratory
Testing
After © Amy C. Edmondson, HBR, April 2011
The team inadvertently deviates from accepted behaviors because they’re not paying attention
The team doesn’t have the skills, conditions or training to execute effectively (impediments are not condiments!)
The team adheres to the process, but it doesn’t work effectively (um, scrum anyone?)
The team faces a task too difficult to be executed reliably every time (oh, you mean like actual software development?)
The process is too complex and causes breakdowns
A lack of clarity about future events causes people to take reasonable actions that produce undesired results.
An experiment conducted to prove that an idea or a design will succeed fails
An experiment conducted to expand knowledge and investigate a possibility leads to an undesired result (awesome!)
Blameworthy Praiseworthy

9. Some Powerful Questions
What would
you attempt to
do if you knew
you could not
fail?
What if we fail
– how will we
recover?
What is the
worst that
could happen?
What if we do
nothing?What is truly
worth doing,
whether we
fail or
succeed?
In this failure,
what went
right?

10. Working Agreement
1. Use Spectrum of Failure to establish a working agreement
on how failures of different kinds will be handled
2. Invitation to conversation on a tough subject for many
organizations – be compassionate and gentle!
3. Use the powerful question examples to help your
stakeholders deepen their understanding of the possibilities
4. Move to the understanding that failure is not a dysfunction
of the system and doesn’t need to be fixed. Rather, it’s a
feedback mechanism that allows the system to get to know
itself, and how it delivers value.

11. Last Suggestion: Horse’s Rear Award
1. Claimed by the individual, claim acknowledged by the
group, publically in a celebration, perhaps at the end of the
sprint
2. The award circulates frequently – horses don’t keep still…
3. Avoid keeping track – desensitize the experience and focus
on learning.
4. Turnover of the award might tell you something about
taking risks in your organization, or it might not!

12. Follow Up Discussion