The Importance of Failure for Designers – Part 2

In Part 1, I showcased the first two methods for dealing with failure and learning from it. Part 2 will focus on activities that can be during a retrospective, or stand alone. These next two methods have a certain risk associated with them due to the emotions that can arise during the resulting conversations. If done successfully however, the passion these emotions invoke can help solidify the lessons that are available to be learned.

Assign Blame

There are some that believe that a single person can shoulder the responsibility of an entire project. The truth is though, whether a project is large or small this is impossible. The responsibility of a project is a partnership of the team, even if it’s a team of one, and the sponsoring client. The advantage of this shared sense of responsibility is that when something goes wrong it’s possible to pin point who was the cause. There are many dangers associated with calling someone out, but if done in a respectful and constructive manner it can be a great motivator.

Conversation Points:

• How have you dealt with being call out when you were responsible for a project failing, or an aspect of the project going a-rye?
• Have you ever had to assign the blame to a project member? How did you approach them?
• What are some safe ways for assigning the blame to someone?
• Does the emotional risk outweigh the possible benefits of pin pointing the person responsible for a mistake?

Highlight the Success

All this talk about failing and finding faults in people can eventually become too negative. No project is a complete and utter failure. Shedding light on the successes helps give the team, and the client, a positive view on the overall value of a project. It helps bring the team back together, and if the client is involved it makes them feel better about investing in the project. Talking about all the stuff that was a success helps to mitigate the negative emotions that may have popped up over the course of the conversation as well. Yes, Bob might have delayed the project a week due to a database issue, but he really hit a home run optimizing the database making the app super quick. In the end, a nice pat of the back goes a long way.

Conversation Points:

• What is more difficult, highlighting failures or successes?
• What is the proper ‘reward’ for someone being responsible for a big success?
• Should highlighting a person’s success be public or private?

Related Posts:

Part 1 of The Importance of Failure for Designers

Part 3 of The Importance of Failure for Designers

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