How many times have you been asked the same battery of questions from one interview to the next?  Frequently you’re asked to highlight your successes, quantify your intellect, measure your personal drive and determination, and maybe a hypothetical question or two thrown in for good measure.  I published an article today in ERE.net that explains a Magic interview question that I’ve used to succinctly determine if a good candidate is the “right” candidate: Have you failed in your career?

Here is the link to the full article: http://www.ere.net/2013/03/14/the-magic-interview-question-have-you-failed-in-your-career/

Food for thought:

• What are your thoughts on the Magic “Failure” Question – good, bad, or indifferent?
• As a recruiter, what are your favorite questions?
• As a candidate, what are the questions that you dislike the most?

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The Magic Interview Question: Have You Failed in Your Career?

Typical interview questions center on candidates’ successes. What have they done that makes them right for a position? What is their greatest strength? When have they succeeded?

These questions may aim to flesh out a skillset, work ethic, or propensity for learning. But, in reality, asking one magic question can actually provide you with much more information than any run-of-the-mill interview question ever could. The “failure” question not only gives you insight into a candidate’s work personality, but it also demonstrates her ability to keep your company relevant in the emerging information economy.

The Magic “Failure” Question

This vital question is actually a series of three. These questions should be asked toward the end of the interview, and only bring these into the conversation when a candidate has strong potential for landing the job.

1. Tell me the last time you failed at something professionally. Everyone should have at least one failure they can recall. Most candidates will use this as an opportunity to externalize their failure as a result of someone or something that could not have been predicted. Pay attention to the way they identify the cause. Many are eager to describe what role others played in the failure, or how insurmountable the obstacles were. Look, instead, for candidates who accepted their part in a failure and turned it into something positive.
2. What did you learn? This is arguably the most important part of the “failure” question. It provides insight into a candidate’s ability to turn failure into opportunity — and that’s vital for your company. For organizations to succeed today, we need more than just doers; we need thinkers who can use creativity and experimentation to build ideas and new models.
3. Would you have done anything differently? The notion that people can be perfect in their vision and decision-making is dated and stuck within the management models of the industrial economy. The world of business is no longer linear. Disruptive technologies are being introduced so quickly that it’s no longer a question of, “Is your business flawed?” Rather, you should ask, “How long before your business becomes obsolete?” That’s why thinkers — people who are able to learn from failure and analyze the results of their actions — are so important. They’re able to understand their surroundings, identify their roles within the system, and think creatively to solve problems and improve processes.

Why Failure Is Important

Employees should be introspective enough to see the system and their own roles within it. As Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) noted in his 2006 book, “A Whole New Mind,” the thinking taught in schools and endorsed by businesses — linear, logical, and left-brained — was perfectly suited for the industrial economy, but not the information economy. Innovation has become king, and we need more than just industrial knowledge. We need right-brained creativity, empathy, and storytelling. To ensure your organization keeps innovating in this new age, use the “failure” question to find the following types of candidates:

• Problem Solvers: The “failure” question shows whether or not a candidate has the intellectual capacity to break down and examine a problem. It’s crucial that everyone in the organization has this ability because waiting for others to solve our problems only creates bottlenecks.

• Innovation Leaders: Most organizations can benefit from “new business” or “innovation development” teams that focus on long-term projects. But companies also need innovation to be a part of every person’s job responsibility. Everyone should be comfortable enough to “experiment” within roles, to occasionally fail at an idea, and share lessons learned.

• Culture Evangelist: To stay relevant, your company has to be able to out-learn the competition. To make this a sustainable practice, you need your employees at every level to encourage risk-taking and to drive out the fears associated with failure.

Your organization’s culture will change as you begin to look for — and accept — failure in candidates from the start. New hires will find it easier to hit the ground running because they won’t be afraid to challenge assumptions or stretch their thinking, and they’ll begin to take calculated risks.

A high fever, night sweats, periodic chills, and bouts of delirium can seem like pure hell.  My recent bout with this year’s flu (influenza virus) had completely knocked me out of commission.  Like so many others that were infected this year it was a long road to recovery.  It has been more than a week since I came down with the flu and I am just now finally feeling like I am back on my feet.  Through the whole ordeal I had one lingering question: I got my flu shot this year so why did I still get so sick?

Just before I came down with the flu I remember hearing a story on NPR (link here) about how ineffective this year’s flu shot has been.  The reporter noted that the vaccine has been 56% effective for preventing all strains of the flu virus in the general population but it has been only 27% effective in preventing those over 65 years old from getting the flu.  What was even more concerning is that the CDC was reporting that this year’s vaccine has been only 9% effective for the elderly in fighting the most common strain of the flu.  Can that be right – only 9% effective?  What else in our lives would we willingly pay for if we knew that it was only 9% effective?

I have to admit that I do get a little annoyed when I my annual flu shot “fails” and I still catch the flu virus.  It seems somewhat fraudulent even though I know that getting the flu shot isn’t supposed to eliminate your chances of getting the flu.  Instead we get a weakened strain of the virus from the shot which is supposed to then trigger a stronger immune response if we do get the full blown virus.  The goal of the entire process is to lessen the intensity of symptoms and speed the recovery period.  The reality is that the flu shot is simply a game of percentages with no guarantees.  But this realization doesn’t make it any easier when we’re on our back aching for several days with a high-grade fever.

The complexity of the flu shot business is not unlike any other complex business decision.  Each year thousands of doctors and scientists are involved in reporting and researching which will be the likely flu strains for the year.  They then spend enormous sums in an attempt to create a vaccine for those virus strains and to distribute those vaccines to doctors and pharmacies across the country.  There are hundreds if not thousands of variables that are involved that will determine the success or failure of each year’s vaccine.  Are they targeting the correct virus strains, is the vaccine strong enough to elicit an immune response, has the virus mutated along the way, or is there possibly an entirely new strain of the flu virus that we have never seen before (i.e. the 2009 H1N1 flu virus)?

All of this complexity in the process is what drives the very low effective rate for the vaccine.  The question then becomes, is a vaccine with a low effective rate better than no vaccine at all?  The CDC suggests “Yes.”  Because of the low risks associate with the vaccine they suggest that it is better for people to get the annual flu shot even if it doesn’t prevent them from getting the flu.  This is the dilemma of the world we live in.  We want clear answers but medicine is still a long ways away from the perfect clarity that we seek (see my recent post on Doctor Mistakes).  It is important to note that because of this year’s low effect rate for the flu shot the CDC is going to reexamine how to best protect seniors 65 and older for next year’s vaccine.  Like every organization should, they are trying to learning from their past shortcomings.

Food for thought:

• Are there complexities in your business that lead to high failure rates?
• Does your organization recognize those complexities and accept the associated risks?
• Do leaders within your organization expect perfect clarity?

Sources:

• CDC: What You Should Know for the 2012-2013 Influenza Season
• CDC: How the Flu Virus Can Change: “Drift” and “Shift”
• The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) – University of Minnesota: The Compelling Need for Game-Changing Influenza Vaccines

Last week I did a story about Dun & Bradstreet CEO Jeff Stibel (@Stibel) on how he had created a Failure Wall at his company in an attempt to build a tolerance for risk-taking and failure within the organization’s culture (Post Here).  I was just able to watch a similar interview that the Huffington Post had done a week prior with Jeff and three other guests.  I found the discussion with the other guests absolutely bizarre but worth addressing.  On one hand they were all praising Jeff for his ability to create a culture that has learned to tolerate failure without being fired.  But on the other hand they all expressed deep concern over what would happen if someone took a picture of someone’s failure from the wall and shared it on social media.  This is exactly the fear bordering on paranoia that Jeff is trying to address with his Failure Wall.

I think that their comments are very indicative of the same feedback that I have received from talking about the importance of failure over the years.  Here is a summary of the lessons that we can learn from their discussion:

Alyona Minkovski (@AlyonaMink) was the host of the event for the Huffington Post (Video Link) and the other guests were Shenan Reed (@Shenan) CMO of Morpheus Media, Dawn Rasmussen (@dawnrasmussen) the author of “Forget Job Security, Build Your Marketability,” and Jocelyn Greenky (@jocelyngreenky) the author of “A Girl’s Guide to Office Politics.”

Shenan had remarked that “a lot of clients come to our office that I am pretty positive that we wouldn’t want to showcase our failures for… we want them to think that we are perfect all the time and as far as they are concerned, we are.  We are perfect all the time.”  But my question is how much risk are you taking with your clients?  If the answer is between zero and a little then you’re right in that you should be near perfect.  But most marketing firms that I have worked with don’t play it that safe.  They take risks and sometimes those risks payoff but sometimes they don’t.  If that is closer to reality then your client certainly knows that fact too.  They are the one’s paying you to take risk and there is an assumption that some of those initiatives might fail.  How might your next conversation with the client go if you shared the risks involved in each of your proposals?  This one is safe but will get you a modest return and this one is a little more risky but it could have a huge payoff.  Then share with them that even if the initiative fails we could do x, y, and z.  I can tell you that from the client side there is nothing worse than big expectations for a new marketing campaign that eventually bombs.  Few things can kill the relationship faster.  But maybe things could be different?

A little later Shenan gets to the root of what is causing her anxiousness when she states that “I think that the thing that I get caught up on… is truly the word fail … It doesn’t give me that positive I want to come to work in the morning and read that board.”

Dawn had picked up on a concern that Jocelyn had made about possibly making yourself vulnerable by sharing your failures.  She had made this comment based on the idea of a coworker taking a picture of your failure and posting it to social media, “… how would this be construed outside of the current environment?  If someone took a picture would that damage your career brand at all because that was taken out of context.”  Sure this could be an issue but it sounds like a worst case scenario.  We all have enough failures to choose from in our lives.  If one is a little too personal or a little too significant then just pick another.  Or perhaps they could just sign their first name or first initial?  At the end of the day, if a hiring manager passed over a candidate because the candidate had recognized one of their failures, learned from it, and was courageous enough to share it with their colleagues then I have to question the strength of the hiring organization.

Jocelyn later made the comment “the positive things that we have also accomplished [are] really important to celebrate as well.”  My take on this comment is that the Failure Wall isn’t meant to be the be-all end-all for employee recognition in the organization.  It is meant to provide reinforcement that leaders want employees to take calculated risks and if those risks fail the employee won’t be punished or fired.  Jeff goes on to mention how every other wall in the office is available to be devoted to success but this one is for sharing failures.  When we only recognize successes and ignore our failures we are subtly reinforcing that failure is something we don’t want.  This would be like a parent who compliments the child only on their “perfect” spelling quizzes and ignores the rest while not understanding why the child thinks that they need to have perfect scores every time.

Food for Thought:

• We have all had failures in our lives, how hard are we trying to be perceived as perfect?
• Do you get anxious when you think about having to share your failures?
• Would you rather work for a company that addresses the idea of failure head on in an open and intelligent way?  Or an organization that tries to maintain an air of perfection?

This week I published an article Why You Should Create Your Own ‘Failure Resume’ for the career blog Brazen Careerist.  In the article I suggest that we all need to move beyond our fear of failure, as individuals and organizations, and that by creating our own Failure Resume we can take the first step.  I have included an excerpt from the article [FULL ARTICLE LINK] that explains the what, why, and how of the failure resume:

What’s a failure resume?

The first time I heard this term was back in 2009. Stanford professor Tina Seelig blogged about how she required her students to write a “failure resume.”

These resumes don’t highlight what one would typically expect to find in a resume. Instead of compiling successes, they list personal, professional and academic failures. After each failure, she had her students reflect on what they learned throughout the process. Genius.

When considering what to add to your own failure resume, it’s important to know the distinction between a failure and a mistake. They aren’t one and the same. A failure is a lack of success, whereas a mistake is an incorrect action. Failure doesn’t necessarily have to stem from a mistake.

Why use a failure resume?

Here are the two strongest reasons for using this type of marketing document:

1. It helps you learn from your failures. Too often, we are uncomfortable admitting our work has failed. We’re quick to put our failures behind us. But why not learn from them? Purposefully take the time to understand what you accomplished, determine what you learned throughout the process and decide what you would do differently.

2. You can more easily assess how much risk you’re taking on in your current role. Most people are overly satisfied with their performance in their current roles. They’re accomplishing their goals and moving their careers and organizations forward, but if you were to ask them the last time they failed at work, they’d likely be stumped.

Don’t play it too safe. As Woody Allen once said, “If you are not failing every now and again, it’s a sign that you’re not doing anything very innovative.”

As you create your own resume, you’ll have a chance to reflect on what you’ve done right—and what you haven’t. This, in itself, should be motivation to improve.

How to create a failure resume

One of the tricks used to get to the root cause of a problem is the “five whys” technique. When creating your failure resume, list a failure and then try to answer one simple question: why did this project fail?

From there, take your answer and try to drill down further by continuing to answer “Why?” four more times. Eventually, you’ll reach the root cause of the failure. This is your chance to address that cause.

You can try and ignore it, but odds are, you’ll face the same issue again. Don’t let that happen! Save yourself from the disappointment of having to list the same failure, year after year, by nipping the issue in the bud right now.

As I continue to discuss the lessons that this tool can offer I have concluded that there are three distinct ways that we can approach the failure resume:

• Personal Development – how do we take the time as individuals to look back on our failures, discover what we can learn from them, and then go about making the changes we determine necessary?  Start by writing our own failure resume.
• Organizational Learning – how do we encourage our employees, from the CEO on down, to admit to their failures without the fear of extreme consequences?  Use a variation of the failure resume to capture failures, and accomplishments, in the organization’s annual review process.
• Hiring Process – how do we ensure that we are hiring future employees who have the right mindset toward innovation, risk taking, and failure?  Try ask candidates to bring a copy of their Failure Resume with them during the interview process.

Back in 2011 I was researching the topic of failure within businesses and came across the story of Jeff Stibel, the CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.  Jeff had written an article for HBR titled “Why I Hire People Who Fail” where he had described how he created a “Failure Wall” within the company.  Jeff sees failure as a great way to learn how to succeed and personally he had always felt that he learned so much more from his failures than from his successes.  When Jeff would recount his successes he was never sure if they were just good luck but with failures he knew where things went wrong.  One evening while he was celebrating a one of his company’s successes Jeff had gotten an idea for how to shape the company’s culture towards failure.  He went in into the office that night and with the help of his assistant he set out to create a Failure Wall.  They picked the biggest wall that they had, painted it white, and then started stenciling some of their favorite failure quotes.  Employees returning the next morning were encouraged to use a permanent marker to write down one of their failures, comment on what they had learned, and put their name to it.  Jeff led by example by sharing one of his personal failures – he felt that he and his wife had waited too long before starting to have children.

This morning I had a chance to talk with Jeff a little more about how he has tried to create a culture within the organization that can not only tolerate failure but embraces it as part of the learning process in driving the business forward.  In the interview, Jeff describes his own continued struggles (i.e. failures) as a leader on when to get involved and when to let his team address issues.  He talks about the fine balance between tolerating necessary failures, or calculated risks, and those decisions that could put the company at risk.  Jeff takes my last question how to institutionalize the knowledge of our failure to share the insight that his company has found by using the annual review process not just as an opportunity to talk about individual’s successes but also to talk about their failures.

The interview with Jeff is quick so take a 10 min break to watch and let me know what you think (YouTube Link).  Note: the recording was a few seconds delayed.

Food For Thought:

• Would your organization benefit from a failure wall?  What if you started one?
• What failure, personal or professional, would you share with your coworkers?
• Would you be willing to talk about your work failures during your annual review?

So everyone is talking about the importance of “transparency” in business these days – customer transparency, financial transparency, even radical transparency.  Do you think you organization is open and transparent?  Maybe your company uses social media to continually engage your constituents in every possible social media vehicle or maybe your CMO has been a little “overly transparent” when on more than one occasion he shared a corporate secret via his new blog.  Sure you’ll talk about your wins, your new strategy, or your latest promotions but have you ever been transparent with your failures?  Have you ever published an annual report that detailed your failed initiatives and the failures in your operations?

Last year I wrote about the Canadian Chapter of Engineers without Borders (@EWB) who had started a blog AdmittingFailure.com where development organizations from around the world could share their failures with the hope that other organizations can learn from their mistakes (previous article).  I had noted how this group felt that it was imperative that they do this because their failures could have such dire consequences.  In business, if we fail it might mean a loss of job or it might impact to our compensation but with NGO development groups working in third world countries, failure can cost lives.

Well, EWB continues to drive this thinking forward and they just published their fifth Failure Report which highlights stories of failed development projects in Ghana, Malawi, Burkina Faso and Uganda as well as failures in their internal operations, including: planning and communication processes, organizational decision-making, and personal leadership.  EWB has opened the proverbial kimono for all to see and in doing so they are freeing themselves from the binds of perfection by admitting their failures.  Ashley Good (@AdmitFailure), the EWB point person for much of this work, describes the importance of sharing these failures in that they “shed insight into systemic issues, highlight important values, [and] build acceptance of the risk inherent in innovation.”

EWB recognizes the power of Systems Thinking (see Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline) where every “Decision” is followed by an “Action” and every action has a “Reaction.”  Those reactions play a very important role in our decision making; they are the feedback loops that provide us with information to help us make better decisions.  Sometimes those reactions are positive and sometimes they are negative but both types help us better understand our environment, our direction, and the accuracy of our decision making.  Most innovators will tell you that they have learned far more from their failures, those negative feedback loops, than from their successes.

Food For Thought:

• EWB has built a strong culture of self-awareness, transparency, and humility.  Are those values similar to the values that your organization espouses to?
• What would it take for your organization to be this open with their failures?  Is it ever possible?
• What would it take for your team to be this open with their failures?  Is it ever possible?

As a follow up to my post last year about how we need to “learn to tolerate failure… even in the medical profession” I wanted to share this TEDx presentation (Doctors make mistakes. Can we talk about that?) from Dr. Brian Goldman (@NightShiftMD).  In it Dr. Goldman captures perfectly the flawed logic of how we all try to portray perfection in our work, especially those god like creates called doctors.  In business our failures can cost money or even jobs but in medicine our failures can cost lives.  And not just the life of patient who suffered from the original error but the lives of other patients based on the repetition of that same error because it is never shared and thus never learned from.

While I think that Dr. Goldman’s presentation is spot on, I feel that it only covers half of the equation.  We hope that our doctors will be more humble and mindful in their race to diagnose our illness.  And we expect that because of this they will be less “likely” to err.  But even the doctor recognizes that medicine is a less than perfect practice.  Even a “refined physician” will still make mistakes.

My suggestion is that the other half of this prescription should be that we as patients need to alter our expectations of what medicine is.  We know that medicine is part science but we also need to remember that it is still part art.  When we expect nothing less than perfection we are not leaving the door open for doctors to admit their mistakes.  And whether or not we want to “allow” these mistakes they will still happen.  These failures may costs lives and maybe even the lives of our loved ones but that is part of our humanity, that is part of our human condition.

Dr. Goldman defines these new expectations as “the redefined physician” in which a physician is “human, knows she’s human, accepts it … and she works in a culture of medicine that acknowledges that human beings run the system.”