the innovation hangover
I first saw this behavior a few years ago, and some of us referred to it as the "[Product X] hangover". An ambitious new product launch had tanked (as those pesky new products will often do), and many of the people who had worked on it had been fired. It left a tangible level of fear and risk-aversion for years. "We don’t want another ‘X’". "We tried that before and look what happened." And on an on. Frightening. No amount of "innovation workshops" could shake it.
I’ve since seen this behavior in other companies (whether or not the team had been fired), and I realized how pervasive this fear of failure could be. Failure is obviously central to innovation cultures ("fail often to succeed sooner"). Yet, how rare it is for a CEO at the yearly company offsite to celebrate the "failures" and the lessons learned from them. How inspiring it would be if he or she did.
Being one of those who would have probably been fired for one of such failures, how can I influence the higher up to see the light of “fail often to succeed sooner”? What book can I “leave” on the bosses desk?
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