I have always been inspired by JK Rowling’s powerful Harvard commencement speech in which she discussed the fringe benefits of failure. As JK said,”It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not lived at all in which case, you fail by default.”
We live in an age that relentlessly promotes innovation. However across the public sector our willingness to talk about risk and learn from failure has not kept pace. Whilst there seems to be consensus about the need to share learning many organisations are working in a competitive funding environment which does not encourage this to happen. How can we create a space which encourages organisations to share the learning about projects which have not achieved their anticipated and desired outcomes and impact?
Our Practical Strategies for Learning from Failure workshop on the 5th August in Cardiff offers the opportunity for strategic thinkers who recognise that we need to learn how to deal with disappointments, mistakes and failures of all kinds. It responds to the #PdDigital15 challenge “how can we unleash people-led digital innovation in health and wellbeing?” by helping to de-stigmatise failure and ‘what doesn’t work’ so we can adapt and move on more quickly.
The event is being facilitated by a unique team bringing perspectives from practice, research and different sectors.
- Shirley Ayres @shirleyayres Connected Care Network
- Chris Bolton @whatsthepont Wales Audit Office
- Roxanne Persaud @commutiny Doctoral Researcher, University of Southampton
- Paul Taylor @PaulBromford Innovation Coach, Bromford Lab
We will be working with you to consider the following questions.
- What are the costs of failure and how can we do things differently?
- Why do we continue to reward the “wrong” activities?
- What are the guiding principles to prepare for a new landscape with citizens at the centre?
There is no charge for the event, thanks to the people at #PdDigital15 and the Wales Audit Office so we expect everyone to make commitments to preparatory thinking, collaborative working, and follow-up. We are doing this because we believe it is important to keep up critical momentum on the conversation.
You can register here
Once registered on this workshop you will need to complete a short questionnaire. It will take about 10 minutes and give you a flavour of the kinds of conversations we will have and provide valuable insights to inform the workshop.
The main outcome from the workshop is to begin a cross sector conversation about how to share the learning from failure across health , housing , care and the wider social sector.
If you are not able to attend the workshop but would like to join in the conversation on Twitter and share resources you have found useful we are using the hashtag #LFFdigital
(We are not officially announcing it yet but if you cannot come to Cardiff in August we will be running another #LFFdigital workshop in Leeds on the 8th October)
bonklesoul
Ermy
shirleyayres
Connecting Social Care and Social Media 