Learning From Failure-By Root or by Branch at Work

When we have a problem, we often think rationally within the parameters of the problem/solution scenario, which for the most part leads us in the right direction to finding an answer to the problem we are trying to solve. Even within the hard sciences, however, rationally only goes so far before we find ourselves only halfway to the desired outcome. So where does that leave those whose job depends on the social sciences, where there are innumerable variables and new and changing outcomes every day? The Urban Institute held a forum last Friday that addressed just that. The answer: learning from failure.

Greg Berman, who has spent the last three years working on a policy inquiry into failed criminal justice experiments shared four lessons of failure that he has learned that can be applied in management: failure is in the eye of the beholder—meaning that we cannot take a pass/fail approach to most things. Some programs will work for others, some will not. The second lesson is that things fall apart. Just because something works once, does not mean it will work again. The third lesson is that context matters. Similarly, just because something works in one place, does not mean it will work somewhere else. The last lesson, which is the hardest of them all, is to be weary of the seductive power of unrealistic expectations.

Olivia Golden has a somewhat different angle for tackling failure that is not so much focused on the failure itself, but on the incremental successes that are learned from failure. When efforts to learn are focused in a public setting it creates a political culture that is focused on failure, thus attitudes that are hostile toward it. Learning becomes impossible when people are afraid of being blamed if things go wrong, which is why Olivia says it is important to focus attention on organizational change.

In a few final remarks, Martha Burt gives some bits of insight on how it might be possible to get to that desired outcome—that is the relative success of the public sector: leadership, coordination, getting data, tracking progress, fixing things as problems happen, and dogged determination.

**Last Friday a coworker and I went to a forum on failure in the public sector at the Urban Institute, and this s a draft of what you will see on GOVERNING.com of my blog about it. I thought it was very pertinent to our policy paper and our class in general about gradual change...the branch method just keeps coming back.

A. Braden