当然，有的公司可能至今仍然如此。“不要自欺欺人。在某些组织里，失败会葬送整个职业生涯。”身为 Ian O. Ihnatowycz 领导力学院执行董事的赛基斯说，“这就像有人落水后立刻寻找责任人一样。”
但赛基斯表示，在管理能力较强的公司，失败是冒险过程中可以接受的一部分。失败之后要花时间寻找原因，总结经验教训，还要奖励员工的冒险精神。
如何应对失败
赛基斯说，第一步是接受失败，并肩负责任。出了问题后不要忙着解雇员工。要把失败视作团队的集体损失，而且要勇于承认是你制定的决策——至少也是你同意了这项决策——导致了失败。
“反省失败的原因或许才是最重要的步骤。”赛基斯说。
密歇根大学罗斯商学院副院长兼教授林恩·武藤(Lynn Wooten)表示，总结失败是确保你的团队从中吸取经验教训最为关键的步骤。“必须要放下身段，亲自与团队会面。”她说，“这种事情无法通过电子邮件来完成。”
必须确保你的员工愿意在失败后进行评估。你要让他们明白，这不是为了寻找责任人，应该毫无顾虑地把你所承担的那部分责任告诉自己的老板。“不要让他们产生心理负担，而要放松心态。他们需要知道你不会伤害他们。”武藤说。
通过这一系列评估，大家就会恢复信心，相信项目会越来越好。或许你还没有制定好下一步计划——通过与员工的会面或许可以确定方案——但你的团队需要知道，你身为一个领导者，将会带领他们走向正确的方向。
“作为一名管理者，你要承认失败，但仍然要让他们感觉你能掌控全局，这并不容易。”武藤说。
失败后的计划
评估完成后，就该确定今后应该部署哪些变化。你的团队需要知道接下来的禁区，避免再犯同样的错误。
之后应该制定目标，以便员工能够为新的目标努力奋斗。定期检查，确保达标，避免失败。
未能成功
“牛顿”的失败困扰了斯卡利许多年，但他最终还是找到了一种方法来应对那场失败。那次失败众所周知，这意味着除了常见的挫败感之外，他还要承受自尊心所遭受的打击。
“失败一点也不好玩。这令人难堪，而且确实会打击你的自信。”斯卡利说。
但斯卡利在商界所遭遇的困境并非都以如此悲惨的结局收场。当他1977至1983年运营百事可乐公司期间，也曾遭遇过一场失败，但最终的结果却好得多。该公司当时花了许多年时间来设计一款玻璃瓶，希望与可口可乐标志性的沙漏状玻璃瓶竞争。但所有的设计都侵犯了可口可乐的注册商标。所以，百事可乐接受了失败，转变了方向。该公司决定为消费者提供更大的包装，而正是这种2升的塑料瓶帮助他们重新定义了软饮料行业。
如今，斯卡利看待当年在苹果的那场失败时的态度也发生了很大变化。iPad在最近几年的流行证明他当年的眼光没有错——只是推向市场的时间有点过早。他本人也从中吸取了教训，这也在斯卡利最近几年创办几家新公司时给他带来了帮助。例如，他是手机运营商Metro PCS的创始投资人，也是软件制造商Open Peak的董事，还是新加坡低价智能手机制造商Obi的创始人。
“与任何一个多年担任企业高管的人一样，我也经历过很多失败。”斯卡利说，“秘诀在于如何处理这些失败，然后调整方向。”
失败后的计划
管理者难免失败。一旦失败，就应该采取以下措施。
接受失败并肩负责任:你是失败的最终责任人。
向团队汇报问题所在。
向员工解释接下来的变化。
设计目标并制定恢复计划。
腾出一段时间来评估自己的进度，确保员工达到目标。
（责编：友义）
Why failure isn’t always a bad thing
By Eric Barton,6 April 2024
John Sculley has had some failures, but there’s one in particular that might always define his career.
Back when Sculley was CEO of Apple in the late 1980s, he gave the go-ahead to an idea called the Apple Newton. It was an early iPad, basically, with a personal assistant that would pave the way for today’s Siri. Seeing it as the future, Sculley dropped more than $100 million into the project.
But with no available mobile-phone networks and limited internet access, there was little that the Newton could actually do. The Newton was ahead of its time. Apple expected to sell one million Newtons in its first year. Instead, it sold just 50,000. In 1993, a near-bankrupt Apple forced Sculley out.
“At the time it happens, it’s very embarrassing and it hurts,” Sculley recalled recently from New York City. “It took years to overcome, and it really knocked the wind out of me.”
In time, though, Sculley saw this failure as something else entirely. The flop was something he could learn from, and in the technology and healthcare businesses he owns now, he uses Newton as a litmus test to help determine the right timing to jump into new technology.
Sculley’s ability to admit failure and use it as a way to shape future decisions is a concept that’s pretty new to business. A generation ago, top managers were expected to be infallible, at least on the surface, says Gerard Seijts, professor of organisational behaviour at Ivey Business School in London, Ontario. When they did nose dive, they shifted blame, moved on, and hopefully never spoke of the problem again.
Of course, it’s still like that in some companies.“Let’s not kid ourselves. In some organisations, failure is a career-ending event,” said Seijts, executive director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership. “It’s man overboard and time to look for whom to blame.”
But at better-managed companies, Seijts said, failure is an accepted part of taking a risk. Failure means taking time to reflect on what went wrong, what can be learned, and to actually reward your staff for the willingness to take risks.
How to react to failure
The first step, Seijts said, is to take ownership and responsibility for the failure. Don’t look for an employee to sack when things go wrong. Consider it the team’s collective loss, and be willing to admit that you made the call — or at least OK’d the call — that led down the wrong road.
“Maybe the most important step is to reflect on what went wrong,” Seijts said.
It’s the review of the failure that can be most crucial to making sure your team learns from the setback, said Lynn Wooten, associate dean and professor at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “You have to get out from behind your desk and meet with your team,” she said. “This is a job that can’t be done by email.”
Be sure your staff is comfortable with the post-failure review. They need to know this isn’t a process of searching for a person to blame, and they need to know it’s OK to tell the boss what you did to contribute to the problem. “It’s about not being a bully but a colleague. They need to know you’re not going to attack them,” Wooten said.
Through all of this review, project confidence that things are going to get better. Maybe you don’t have the next plan designed yet – that might be something that comes out of meetings with your staff – but your team needs to know that you’re the leader to get them headed in the right direction.
“As a manager, you need to admit failure but still seem in charge, and that’s going to be difficult,” Wooten said.
What’s next after a setback
With the review completed, determine what can be done differently in the future. Your team needs to know what’s off limits next time to make sure you don’t end up in the same spot.
Then set goals so that your employees can strive for something new. Check in regularly to make sure you’re hitting those benchmarks and leaving that failure behind you.
Failure to success
It took a few years after the Newton failure, but Sculley finally figured out a way to personally process the failure. His was a very public failure and that meant dealing with a hit to his pride alongside everything else he felt.
“There’s nothing fun about failing. It’s embarrassing and can really hit you in your self-confidence,” Sculley said.
Not all of Sculley’s rough times in business ended so poorly. Back when he was running Pepsi Co, from 1977 to 1983, he had another failure that ended far better. The company had been trying for years to design a glass bottle that could compete with Coca-Cola’s iconic hourglass-shape. But all of the designs violated Coke’s trademark. So Pepsi took the failure and made a pivot. The company decided to give customers a bigger package, the two-litre plastic bottle, which helped redefine the soft-drink industry.
Now, Sculley sees his failure at Apple far differently, too. The recent popularity of the iPad proves that he was right in thinking it was the future – it was just that the company brought it to market too early. It’s a lesson he’s taken with him in helping to found several new companies in recent years, including as a founding investor in mobile-phone provider Metro PCS, board member of software maker Open Peak, and creator of Obi, the Singapore-based budget smart phone marketed in emerging markets.
“Like anyone who’s been an executive for many years, I have a lot of failures,” Sculley said. “The secret is figuring out how to process those failures and then pivot.”
Your Post-Failure Plan
Managers are bound to fail. When it happens, here’s what to do next.
1. Take ownership and accountability for the fact that you ultimately are responsible for the setback.
2. Debrief your team on what went wrong.
3. Explain to the staff how to do things differently next time.
4. Design goals, objectives and a recovery plan.
5. Set aside time to assess your progress and make sure the staff is hitting those goals.
