American Military University Failure is Essential Discussion

STUDENT 1 (Glen):

The idea of failure can help bring success seems to be a concept that people think about and say you cannot be a failure. You have to succeed in the idea pushed into the minds of everyone. The concept is winning all the time being the best. Yes, doing well at things and and being successful is the ultimate goal, but the idea of stating you will make mistakes there are going to be failures in life should not be put down by people. It should be used as a building block to help learn from them to be able to get better. I know in the military that the push is you must be the best you can be and they are always pushing for success at every point. Mistakes are dealt with harshly. People who make mistakes are looked at in ways that does not foster that you can learn from them. Depending on how bad a mistake is can cost you a career or ability to advance. Yes, the military is a serious environment, but people are going to make mistakes and people learn the most from making a mistake than from always being right. I know that in certain things mistakes cannot be tolerated because it can cost a life or destruction of equipment. It is very important to follow the steps and guidelines established to take care of the situation. I think when it comes to operation that failure is not something that is a real option because it will cost lives. I think that when it comes to developing individuals in the military because it is a lifestyle, that people need to be encouraged to succeed and work with them when they do make mistakes. A more coaching to help where failures are being seen would I think be a more profitable approach that the military could take in regards to individuals.

STUDENT 2 (Chris):

Risk certainly has a place in business, but it can take on various forms and is more appropriate in some facets than in others. In the interview, Mr Premji was advocating for allowing workers to take risks in order to develop and grow in ways that are individualized; this gives workers a feeling of trust and freedom with which they can explore new ways of doing things. This also has the benefit of giving employees a sense of ownership, where they can build things that they can be proud of. These are ingredients for greatness!

Given the right opportunity, taking risks can be very rewarding, even if the outcome is deemed a failure. There is always something new to learn that can be carried into the future as a lesson that can be applied the next time a similar situation presents itself.

As businesses processes mature, the more risk averse they become, which is a good thing in some contexts and a not so good thing in others. For instance, in an R&D environment, it is beneficial to have inventors – scientists, engineers, developers – trying new things. The more off-the-wall, the better, because that’s how breakthroughs are made. I don’t think it would be wise to have a company’s finance person trying to invent new ways of doing math with the company’s financial reports, because the risks are too high and the reward is far too low.

There has to be some balance, where the risks should match the reward, where a high-risk, low negative impact failure (or multiple) won’t impact the business negatively, but just one success might be hugely impactful. Incremental improvement of something that already exists is not a way to grow, to Mr Premji’s point. Taking a big risk by changing drastically is the way to change “the game” and stay ahead of trends and the competition, it just needs to be used at the right time and in the right measure. Have you ever heard of a product being “before its time” resulting in its demise, only to have essentially the same thing brought to market two decades later by someone else that becomes hugely popular? It happens more than most realize – timing is an important consideration when taking risks in a business environment.

In my workplace, we run a 24/7 support operation where certain activities and interactions must happen a certain way, but there are other things that can be improved. These are the types of things that can be approached as a growth opportunity, where the risk to the operation is low if the undertaking were to fail, but the impact of a success would also be small. As time goes on, the employees are being empowered and encouraged to do more things like this, which I think is a good thing, especially as that becomes more ingrained into the culture.

STUDENT 3 (Chuck):

Risk-taking is essential to the growth and strength of any organization. Without taking a risk, would your current organization even be around today?

I work in a field that relies heavily on a lot of different technologies. We are even incentivized to bring new ideas to management for a possible integration of new technology into our scope. One of the biggest things that our company likes to see is innovation that also drives safety. Safety is lauded is the number one aspect of our job, since we work in a highly volatile place where any incident can results in a major catastrophe. I have been with my company for 8.5 years and I have seen many items come in and be implemented, as well as many that get shelved and never to be seen or used again.

Recently we have been implementing a new type of inspection program to help the client achieve results on specific piping that they have not been able to in the past. This will help to prevent any possible losses of containment or even a failure of the system itself.

The client allowed a certain amount of time to be pulled away from their core work in order to try this new tool out. They client understands what the reward can result in, by allowing some other work to be bypassed for now. Results from the inspection were determined to be a success and have been established as a new tool to be implemented into the core program as of 2021.

I would say that our place of work is very willing to accept some risk, knowing that there is a possibility of failure.