Importance of admiting failure
May 14th, 2009 | Published in Economics idea
The ability to fail is critical.
If you are working on something that is never going to succeed, the best thing for you to do is to admit defeat and move on to something else.
For any organization to thrive, it also needs to be able to admit defeat. If a project is doomed to failure, it’s best to cut the losses and move resources to different projects. This means that two things need to happen. First, the organization has to identify a failure. Second, it needs to have the ability to respond by reallocating resources.
Identifying failures isn’t that hard. People working on a project often have a good sense of the likelihood that a project will succeed. The problem is responding appropriately. Decision makers need to be open to bad news. They also need to have the ability and motivation to respond.
The worst outcome for both individuals and organizations is to doggedly pursue failing projects. It wastes time and resources.
