The Other "F" Word E-Book

John Danner

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 406

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Leverage the power of failure in your organization

Nobody wants to fail, but failure is a fact of life. Most of us treat it as a regrettable, even shameful, event best overlooked. In truth, failure can be a game-changing strategic resource that can help you and your organization achieve the greater success you crave.

The Other "F" Word shows how successful leaders and teams are putting failure to work every day - to re-engage employees, spark innovation and accelerate growth. Authors Danner and Coopersmith - with their rare blend of senior-level executive experience, global advising, teaching acumen and cross-discipline perspective - share these valuable new practices, and show how they can improve results across your organization. Based on exclusive interviews with prominent leaders and insightful examples from their own in-depth work, the book features a practical seven-stage framework to liberate failure as a force to advance your leadership agenda. After all, everyone creates and confronts failure on a daily basis. Why not use it to your advantage? The Other "F" Word shows you how to:

• Start an open, productive conversation about failure across your organization
• Reduce the fear of failure that stifles initiative, creativity and engagement
• Anticipate, prepare for and respond to failure, so you can leverage it when it happens
• Harness failure as a catalyst to drive innovation, improve performance and strengthen culture

Failure's like gravity – pervasive and powerful. Whether you're a leader or team member of a startup, a growing business, or an established enterprise, failure is today's lesson for tomorrow. Let The Other "F" Word show you how to apply this lesson and take your company where it needs to go.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise for The Other ‘F’ Word

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword By Jeffrey Bewkes, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner

Preface: A Book About a Topic Nobody Wants to Talk About

Chapter 1: What's in It for Me? Your Personal Guided Book Tour

Find Yourself Here

Our Roles in This Book

Part I: What

Chapter 2: The Other F Word: “Failure” Is Such a Loaded Word

From Verb to Verdict: How Failing Becomes Failure

Chapter 3: The Gravity of Failure and Failure's Gravity

A Universal Force

Gravity's Silver Lining

Failure's Gravity

Chapter 4: Defining Failure: Mistakes and Unwelcome Outcomes That Matter

Failure is Today's Lesson for Tomorrow

Unintentional Versus Invitational Failures

What About Accidents?

Debunking the “unk unk” Defense

Chapter 5: Fear and Memory: Failure's Force Multipliers

Fear of Failure and the Status QUO

Fear: Failure's Magnifier

Fear: Failure's Strongest Ally

Memory: Failure's Long Shadow

Part II: When and Where

Chapter 6: Start-Ups: Launching Your Venture in the Land of Failure

Small Failures Can Lead to Huge Success

The Other F Word and Start-Ups

Failure's Unique Faces in Start-Ups

Start-Ups Have a Complicated Relationship with Failure

To-Do's: Improve Your ODDS of Start-Up Success

Your Role: The Passionate Convincer

Chapter 7: Keep-Ups: Surviving and Thriving After You Meet Payroll

Fishing for Profits

Key Facts

It's Not Easy Chasing This Version of the American Dream

Running the “Six C” Gauntlet

Family Dynamics: Can They Help?

The Goldilocks Zone

To-Do's: Rev Up Your Keep-Up

Your Role: The Confident Juggler

Chapter 8: Grown-Ups: Dodging the Oxymoron of “Big Company Agility”

From Confident, Nimble Innovator…

…To Stumbling Follower

Key Facts

Newton's First Law

The Irony of “Too Big to Fail”

The Risk/Reward Paradox

Grown-Up Math: The Beauty and Tyranny of the Big Denominator

Your Biggest Competitor May Be You!

To-Do's: Focus on the Biggest Issue in Big Business

Your Role: Trusted Colleague

Part III: How

Chapter 9: The Failure Value Cycle: Seven Stages Where You Can Leverage or Flunk Failure

Chapter 10: Stage One: Respect: Acknowledge the Gravity of Failure

Back to the Darkroom: Kodak Loses Focus

The “Aretha Challenge”: Can Your Organization Spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T?

The Price of Ignoring

Free the Other F Word!

Develop a “Raise Your Hand” Culture

Expand Your Vocabulary

From Six Sigma to Zero Stigma

Checklists and Compasses

1. No-Fault Failure Zones: Freedom to Experiment

2. Low-Defects Zones: Bring In the Low-Sigma Troops

3. No-Failure Zones: Where Perfection Is The Standard

Find the Value-Add

Your Role: Straight Talker

Chapter 11: Stage Two: Rehearse: It's Not Just About Fire Drills

When Every Day Is Game Day

An Ounce of Anticipation Is Worth a Pound of Improvisation

Keep Your Crown Jewels Safe

High-Reliability Settings Where You Can't Afford To Fail

Rehearsing When High Resiliency Is What's Required

Think of Your Experiments as “Pre-hearsals”

Your Role: Tenacious Coach

Chapter 12: Stage Three: Recognize: Pick Up the Signals of Failure Earlier

From Big Bang to Big Data to Big Insights

Picking Up Failure's Early Signs

Your Role: Watchful Monitor

Chapter 13: Stage Four: React: Deal with It!

New Yoga Position: Bend Over, Insert Foot in Mouth

How Rehearsals Can Help Your React Reflexes

Resist the Knee-Jerk Reaction to Scapegoat

Ask The “Right Now” Question

Acknowledge and Apologize

What About “Failure Is Not an Option”?

Honor Your Honest Failures

Your Role: Team Captain

Chapter 14: Stage Five: Reflect: Turn Failure from a Regret to a Resource

Searching for the What, When, How, and Why, Before the Who

Take Care of Your Injured First

Recovery and Reflection Go Together

Address the Ripple Effects

Judgment Trumps Analysis: Thinking Beyond the Event

Big Data and the Crowd in the Cloud

Your Role: Inquisitive Student

Chapter 15: Stage Six: Rebound: Retake the Initiative

Short-Cycle versus Long-Cycle Rebounds

Get Back in the Game

Clear the Decks for an Effective Rebound

Your Role: Field General

Chapter 16: Stage Seven: Remember: Embed Failure Savvy in Your Culture

What's Worse than a Root Canal? Doing One on Yourself!

Create “What Have You Failed For Us, Lately?” Metrics

Your Role: Proud Storyteller

Chapter 17: The Failure Value Report Card: A Practical Tool to Help You Put Failure to Work

Before

During

After

Grading Guidelines

Part IV: Now

Chapter 18: Creating the Failure-Savvy Organization

Our Journey So Far

1. Decide Where Your Organization Needs to Go

2. Take Stock of Where You Are, But Beware

3. Focus on a Foundation of Trust

4. Teams—Your Culture's Proving Ground

5. Metrics That Prove You're Serious

Some Simple Ways to Get Started

Chapter 19: Escape the Gravity of Failure: Leading the Fallible Organization

Afterword By China Gorman, CEO, Great Place to Work Institute

Appendix: Our Classrooms: Putting Failure to Work in Creating Value

“Workshop for Startups”: Pressure-Testing New Venture Concepts

Our “Other F Word” Course

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Index

Presenting The Other “F” Word Keynote

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

Begin Reading

Part 1

Chapter 1

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Praise for The Other ‘F’ Word

“We are all in the innovation industry now. To adapt, most organizations must rise to a new level of risk-taking, experimentation, and tolerance for failure. In fact the winners continually reinvest in failure because they know it's a source of breakthroughs. No one knows this better than Danner and Coopersmith, who have delivered a brilliant and engaging handbook in The Other ‘F’ Word. Let them help you find new levels of success by creating a culture of ‘constructive failure’ in your organization.”

—Randy Komisar, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

“This excellent book is so needed. Failure is a gift. As a senior relationship manager (think sales), I make the Hall of Fame if I win 3 out of 10 pitches. That means I encounter the other F word 70 percent of the time. And that is a good day. So why not view ‘no’ as an invitation to ‘yes,’ and failure as the gateway to success? Learn, laugh, move forward differently—keep at it. Danner and Coopersmith's book shows you and your team how to do that, and win.”

—Barbara Byrne, Vice-Chair, Investment Banking, Barclays Capital

“Danner and Coopersmith present a very valuable perspective into the most important ingredient for entrepreneurial success: failure. This is an excellent guide to what gives Silicon Valley its unique global advantage—the acceptance and embrace of failure. Entrepreneurship is all about experimentation; learning from failure is the key to success. This tells you ‘everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask’ about failure—and success.”

—Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow of Policy & Research, Singularity University; faculty, Stanford and Duke University; TIME magazine “Top 40 Minds in Tech”

“I tell entrepreneurs around the world that the best way to avoid failure is to listen to the right people in the first place. If you want to learn about the power and potential of the other F word and what you can do to leverage it in your organization, the right people to listen to are John Danner and Mark Coopersmith. Hats off to them for creating this indispensable user's manual to becoming a more failure-savvy leader, avoiding it when you can and harnessing it when you can't.”

—Jeff Hoffman, co-founder, Priceline.com; Partner and co-founder, ColorJar

“Failure IS an option. By leaning into failure, entrepreneurial leaders can inspire new levels of creative capacity building and employee engagement. Simultaneously, organizations can develop, build, and grow talent-rich pipelines of ‘failure resilient leaders’ who can experiment, iterate more, and lead better. Danner and Coopersmith make it clear that ‘failure’ is not the buzz word du jour, but a strategic competitive advantage of high potential, adaptive leaders and failure-savvy organizations. It is my sincere hope this book encourages leaders to dream bigger and bolder and to shutter their incremental strategic plans in favor of institutionalizing a failure-smart culture that leverages and integrates organizational learning, growth, and innovation. Lean in and enjoy the ride!”

—Karl R. LaPan, Chairman and Interim CEO, National Business Incubation Association (NBIA)

“Danner and Coopersmith have unlocked the way to make failing not just a ‘lesson learned’ in your company but a cultural transformation that accelerates growth and engagement. They provide the know-how for creating a culture that rewards risk-taking and inspires creative thinking.”

—Nancy Schlichting, CEO, Henry Ford Health System

“No one ever sets out to fail. But being afraid to fail means you'll be afraid to try. Playing it safe gets you nowhere. That's why the Lean Startup discipline embraces failure as a key resource for strategic insight. Whether you're an entrepreneur or an executive in a large company, this essential book shows you how to harness failure to get the results you want.”

—Steve Blank, father of the Lean Startup movement and author of The Startup Owner's Manual

“It is very rare to find a book such as The Other ‘F’ Word that is so fun, profound, and practical, all at the same time. The book needs to come with a warning that it is very hard to put down.”

—Derek Lidow, Princeton professor, entrepreneur, and author of Startup Leadership

“Whether you're a hardened CEO or a rising star, if you're looking for opportunity, don't overlook failure. It might be market failure that points the way to your next high-impact venture; or an internal failure that highlights where you ought to pivot. Either way, this novel, clear-thinking book can be your guide. Danner and Coopersmith have translated their decades of experience with startups, mid-size and global businesses into a practical and creative executive's guide to the other F word.”

—Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO, Endeavor; author of Crazy Is a Compliment

“I've seen thousands of businesses over my career, from ambitious startups and growing small businesses to thriving multinationals and dying enterprises living in their past. As much as they all crave success, what can really separate the winners from the losers is how effectively they deal with the central topic of this must-read book: failure and the fear of it that stifles innovation and limits real employee commitment. Danner and Coopersmith offer a winning and refreshingly practical framework that can improve your company's odds of success.”

—Pete Hart, retired Chairman and CEO, Silicon Valley Bank; former CEO, MasterCard International

“Great innovators don't fear failure. They learn from it. They build on it. In this pragmatic guide, John Danner and Mark Coopersmith tell you how to think about failure in a positive way—and use it to create value.”

—Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, Aspen Institute; former Chairman/CEO, CNN; bestselling biographer of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Henry Kissinger

“The Other ‘F’ Word profiles how to transform your organization from one which fears failure, assigns blame, and discourages breakthrough thinking into one which maximizes learning and embraces a way of working to establish a competitive edge and a pathway to winning performance. An important read!”

—Jim Goldman, former CEO, Godiva

“Leadership is a rare blend of confidence and humility, and nowhere is this more evident than in the way that leaders handle the inevitable failures that come their way. Danner and Coopersmith write about how to manage failure to your advantage, from moving through your fear to creating the failure-savvy organization that can thrive amid all sorts of disruptions. Whether you're in the C-suite or a leader on the front lines, I recommend that you make the bold move of putting failure to work. The Other ‘F’ Word will show you how.”

—Charlene Li, Founder and CEO, Altimeter Group, speaker, and bestselling author of Groundswell and Open Leadership

“Danner and Coopersmith show you how to change your relationship with failure. Start putting this book to work before you make another move—if you want to succeed.”

—Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist, Canva; author of The Art of Social Media

“A great reminder why the world's best coaches and athletes spend endless hours watching game films just to embrace the power of The Other ‘F’ Word. This book's an All-Star playbook in any league.”

—Leo Kiely, Director, Altria Group Inc.; retired CEO, MillerCoors

“While failure can be a great teacher, one has to be a willing student. But learning's only valuable when it's put into practice. That's where The Other ‘F’ Word makes such a powerful impact, showing how we can translate the lessons from failure into results that count. And that's why this book deserves its place on the desks of every executive trying to spark innovation and entrepreneurial spirit in their teams and organizations.”

—Chris Kuenne, Founder and CEO, Rosemark Smart Capital

“Danner and Coopersmith deliver key insights that could not be more timely for healthcare and so many other fields where the urgent need for transformation is driving high-risk strategies, and where failures litter the landscape. Their Failure Value Cycle should be required reading for every hospital, health plan, or medical group executive.”

—Molly Joel Coye, MD, MPH, Chief Innovation Officer, UCLA Health

“In this book, Danner and Coopersmith have framed failure as ‘today's lesson for tomorrow.’ I think that is exactly right. But more importantly the authors have gone beyond quotable sayings and feel-good framings and provided an actual field guide to harvesting this renewable resource. Read this. Share it and try their methods on for a while.”

—Mickey McManus, Visiting Research Fellow, Autodesk; Chairman and Principal, MAYA Design;co-author of Trillions

“In our increasingly complex yet connected world, the organizations that are most likely to sustainably succeed are those where people are willing to discuss their failures and thus adapt faster, and feel closer. Discover exactly how in this spellbinding new book The Other ‘F’ Word.”

—Kare Anderson, author of Mutuality Matters; TED talk on Opportunity Makers

“A lifetime in high-risk environments has taught me that failure can be an extraordinarily rich source of success. So take Danner and Coopersmith's spot-on advice: Don't just fail, learn. Don't just learn, grow. The Other ‘F’ Word shows you how, with a great deal to offer even the most canny executives.”

—Scott Delman, Tony Award–winning producer, The Book of Mormon; private equity fund manager

“Intelligent organizations become that way by being confident enough to set out in powerfully distinctive strategic directions yet humble enough to acknowledge and learn from their failures along the way. Whether facing the challenge of engaging an increasingly diverse workforce or building an organization for sustainable innovation, executives today need the no-nonsense, practical insights The Other ‘F’ Word delivers. The authors show how you can leverage failure to inform and even inspire your organization. And since failure knows no boundaries, their book promises to be a vital resource for intelligent leaders everywhere.”

—Tammy Erickson, Executive Fellow, Organizational Behavior, London Business School; speaker; McKinsey Award-winning author, Thinkers50

“We all forget that enterprise is about experimentation, and most experiments don't work. The Other ‘F’ Word teaches us how to mine gold out of that giant steaming pile of failure! Whether you're an intrapreneur or entrepreneur, you'll gain fresh inspiration and advice about using failure as a valuable tool for reaching your goals.”

—Jim Fruchterman, social entrepreneur; Founder and CEO, Benetech

“Danner and Coopersmith are right: Failure is the most under-recognized, under-valued, and under-leveraged resource in business today. Leaders who can take advantage of its opportunities can achieve the impossible. Organizations that can harness failure can gain the top-tier advantages of greater employee engagement and resilience. The bottom line is, if you want to win you must master the art and science of failure. I recommend The Other ‘F’ Word to you and your team.”

—William Hasler, Dean Emeritus at University of California's Haas School of Business; former Vice Chair, KPMG Peat Marwick; former Chairman, Solectron

“A leader's job is to deliver great results today—while simultaneously developing culture, new initiatives, and bold change for tomorrow. This demands enormous amounts of energy, courage, and willingness to take risks. Danner and Coopersmith provide invaluable hands-on advice for both taking risk and mastering the art of failure. The Other ‘F’ Word is a critical read for all innovators and leaders of breakthrough change.”

—Dave Pottruck, Chairman, HighTower; former CEO, Charles Schwab; author of Stacking the Deck: How to Lead Breakthrough Change Against Any Odds

The Other “F” Word

How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work

John Danner • Mark Coopersmith

Cover image: Old Letter © iStock.com/Bastar

Cover design: C. Wallace

Copyright © 2015 by John Danner and Mark Coopersmith. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

Illustrations by Eli Noyes from Alligator Planet; www.alligatorplanet.com.

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