success, failure and the space in-between
By brendan at 11 October, 2011, 11:38 am
I had a coffee with a friend yesterday that got shafted at work. She had been working on an exciting new agenda for some months, got signoff at every level and was ready to transition into the new leadership role that came with her plan. Unfortunately they (the evil bosses) took her plan, but replaced [...]
Read More >>4 tips for avoiding invisible failures
By brendan at 4 April, 2011, 2:32 pm
Have you ever noticed how successful businesses tend to have nice biscuits in the kitchen, normally something special, wrapped in chocolate, perhaps with a little dash of marshmallow or jam. Meanwhile businesses on their last legs, normally have a couple of broken Anzacs in the biscuit barrel. Not to say I don’t like Anzac’s, its [...]
Read More >>Own Goals
By brendan at 7 February, 2011, 9:31 pm
Last week I was honoured to sit in a meeting of a team that was assured of success. I say this with disgust though as the group refused to clearly define what they they were trying to achieve, specifically so they couldn’t fail. Sadly its too easy to get away with this in a NFP [...]
Read More >>Failing Smarter
By brendan at 6 December, 2010, 8:26 am
Last month we ran a fascinating session on failure at the Churchill Club. It was prompted by a comment of a friend of mine who had been the commander of the Australian forces in the Solomon islands a couple of years ago. He said “Of course failure is going to happen, so we give people [...]
Read More >>What happens after failure….
By brendan at 27 October, 2009, 11:11 am
This is a video of a speech I did in June this year on corporate failure at AIMIA. Rather than talk about climbing back up, or just hanging on the cliff, I decided to talk about what happens when you actually fall off and your business fails. It was probably a bit too candid. Its [...]
Read More >>Failure has bad PR
By brendan at 16 March, 2009, 12:02 pm
In mid February the Churchill Club ran a programme called Innovation DNA which was about making innovation a sustainable programme in Australian SME’s. One of the panellists, Wes Sonnenreich from Deloitte, mentioned that a good failure was one that was quick and cheap. Which got me thinking about failure again. My assertion has been for [...]
Read More >>Failing or Flailing?
By admin at 12 May, 2008, 10:16 am
In the late 80’s when I was training to be an Army Reserve Officer, one of the major training (and leadership development) techniques that had a major impact on me was ownership of failure. If you taught a lesson and more than a handful of people failed the quick test at the end, then you [...]
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