Embracing Praise-worthy failure

Simon Breakspear
16 September 2024

30-Second Version

• Improvement work is complex, messy and deeply human. We should expect the journey to impact to be littered with mistakes, failures and near misses.
• Praiseworthy failures are a key source of new insights and should be celebrated as a necessary element to finding a way to make new ideas work in your context.
• Teams should commit to making better mistakes every term.

The Full Read

Over the last 5 years, through my Agile School Leadership Certificate Program, my team and I have had the privilege of working with thousands of school and mid-level leaders who are spearheading improvement projects. While these leaders are admirably passionate and driven, as we know, even with the best intent and resourcing, school change is complex, messy, and unpredictable. No matter how well-planned these projects are, there’s a high likelihood that things won’t go quite as expected! So it makes sense to learn how to categorise and respond to mistakes.

Working in school environments means dealing with ever-changing community landscapes, policy shifts, and various interpersonal challenges. Rather than aiming for perfection from the start, it’s, therefore, more realistic to focus on making better mistakes with each implementation cycle. There’s a mindset shift that comes with acknowledging mistakes and welcoming the learnings they’ll give us. This is where agility and responsiveness in leadership come into play, learning to give ourselves room to adapt as we go.

Praiseworthy vs. blameworthy failure
It’s very important, therefore, to distinguish ‘blameworthy failure’ from ‘praiseworthy failure’ so we know how to respond when the inevitable happens. Praiseworthy failure happens when we try something new in a complex setting, grounded in the best available evidence, and it doesn’t work as expected. These failures are valuable because they lead to fresh insights and pave the way for better steps in the future. As leaders, we should embrace praiseworthy failures as part of our journey to impact, gleaning from what doesn’t work to improve our next attempts.

By contrast, blameworthy failure happens when we don’t apply research-informed approaches and insights, leading to predictable and avoidable mistakes. If blameworthy failure is happening frequently, it might be time to examine how you’re setting up projects and whether there might be capability gaps in your team, accountability and role clarity deficiencies, or just a need for better operational systems.

Learning from bad variability
Often, the most significant learning comes from examining where things aren’t working as planned. Instead of focusing solely on successes, we should cultivate a mindset of curiosity, asking, “For whom did this not work, and why?” This approach helps us understand the enabling conditions for positive impact and identify areas needing improvement in our next cycle of work.

Commit to making better mistakes
Why not commit to making better mistakes each term? Encourage your team to openly share and learn from these experiences, accelerating your collective learning and improvement. Embrace those praiseworthy failures and then take the next best move forward.