Learning from failures agenda

Session Outcomes

• To explore and share our own comfort-level and experiences with failure
• To understand how we can benefit from the failures that we experience
• To continue to build a culture of learning from failures
• To grow relationships with the individuals that make up this group

Choose a group member to facilitate today’s discussion (preferably someone who did not lead a previous session).  Choose another group member to serve as a timekeeper, to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to share during the session. 

10 minutes:                
Icebreaker.  Share one of your favorite spots in the Bay Area.

45 minutes:                
Sharing.  In the Harvard Business Review article titled “Strategies for Learning from Failure,” Amy Edmondson describes three different types of failure: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent: 

• Preventable failure: mistakes that could have been prevented if we took the time to think them through.
• Complexity-related failure: mistakes that occur when a combination of internal and external factors come together in a way to produce a failure, despite processes and/or protocols being in place.
• Intelligent failure:  mistakes that happen when one is working in a new field, creating an innovative program, or doing something that has never been done before.

Regardless of whether we are researchers or clinicians, we all have experience with these different types of failures, yet we seldom speak of them.  Sharing these experiences, however, may be helpful both to our peers and to foster a culture of learning from these mistakes.  Here are some questions to help get the conversation started:

• If you feel comfortable sharing, what was one of the most difficult failures that you have experienced and how did you get through it?  What type of failure was it (preventable, complexity-related, intelligent)?  Your sharing will likely be beneficial to those in your group.
• Based on your own experience, what strategies have you developed to help you to move forward from your “failures”?
• Both articles discuss the benefits of failure, what are some benefits to failures that you have experienced?
• Brainstorm on ways that you can contribute to a culture of learning from failure.
  
  Final 5 minutes:         
  Wrap up.  Offer gratitude to the group for listening, sharing, supporting.  The next meeting will be in May - please use this time to decide on a date/time for that meeting and designate someone to communicate this information to Michelle Lifto