Building a risk-taking culture

Business people, especially senior management staff, like to dig into failure in the name of root cause analsis and ‘not repeating past failures’. They say they can learn a great deal from mistakes, and avoid them in the future. I am sure this is true, to some extent. I prefer to think of this behavior as ‘digging for blame’. It is really not productive.

How much effort and energy are they spending on their analysis. This energy could be used to invest in ongoing projectsn and moving the organization forward. What is the impact on the people involved? Does this analysis promote a risk-taking culture?

I would argue that if an organization wants to adopts a risk-taking mentality, they would take a complete different approach. I think the correct approach is to recognize the failure, face it down, dust yourself off, and move forward. This will not set well with some, but I think it will lead to more innovation, and less over thinking. It will also make for a happier, balanced team.