To fail… Put together flawed plans to reach your goals, plans that any fairly intelligent individual would be able to poke full of holes. Make sure that at least one crucial step calls for an unattainable step.

Be careful… if you do the right stuff you may succeed.

Businesses and products and ideas are rarely always successful. Many errors may be made in the startup company’s operating system or lack of operating system. Planning may never have been considered and the product or service being marketing may very well not be what the market is seeking. True breakthrough innovation, an importance in today’s globally competitive world in which product cycles are shorter than ever, is so extraordinarily hard. It requires well honed organizations built for efficiency and speed to do what it is that feels unnatural: explore, expand, foul up sometimes and then repeat.

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Intelligent failures – those that happen early and inexpensively and that can contribute new insights about a business’s customers should be more than just tolerated they should be encouraged. Working out how to master the process of failing fast and failing cheap and then fumbling towards. Getting good at failure needs a good leader, someone who can create an environment safe for taking risks and who is prepared also to share their own mistakes.

It might also mean bringing in an independent observer who is unattached to the business and its history and it also means making time available to reflect on the failure and not just on success.

Because of the enormous emphasis that we all place on success and successful performance there is a need to design ways to measure performance that balance accountability with the freedom to make mistakes.

Individuals may fear failure but they also fear the consequences of it even more. In addition to making sure performance evaluation takes on a long term view it is important to consider rewarding or celebrating smart failures.

As many businesses will fail it may be necessary for an increasing number of business to take on the mindset of designers and scientists who work to prove themselves wrong not to succeed. Failures in business have a great deal to teach us.