把失敗變成學習系統
許多人把失敗視為必須避免的結果，但在許多高績效組織中，失敗同時也是重要的資訊來源。當一個人或一個團隊能夠建立回饋機制，從錯誤中萃取經驗、調整做法並持續優化，失敗就會成為推動成長的燃料。
| 用一種快速求敗、經常犯錯的態度去嘗試 |
在現實世界，顯著成就通常伴隨在諸多失敗和錯誤之後出現。矽谷的企業家稱這種現象為「在失敗中前進」
──你要盡快失敗並且盡可能以最低廉的成本，先找出哪些做法行不通。大家都同意，先做出一個產品原型上市，再依客戶回饋的意見加以改進，遠比把自己關在實驗室，努力追求完美要好得多。
皮克斯動畫工作室是從快速失敗中學習的最佳範例。埃德．卡特莫爾是皮克斯的共同創辦人之一，他曾形容他們的創作過程，是從「爛」到「不爛」。皮克斯開始製作電影時，創作團隊要淘汰數以千計半生不熟的點子和不值一文的廢物。他們簡直要把腳本修改千百次，才得到滿意的結果。因為他們允許自己在初期犯錯直到做對為止，才得以淘汰爛點子並持續精雕細琢他們擁有的東西。
事實上，通往偉大事蹟的路途上，總是布滿挫敗的地雷、行不通的壞點子，以及一開始就出師不利。如果你想把事情做得更好，就要在學會掌握訣竅時，有把事情搞砸的準備。動手做才能獲得最多的學習，而不是做計畫。
| 失敗的科學 |
航空業是今日全世界最講究安全至上的產業之一。所有的商業飛機都裝設了2部幾乎不可能損壞的飛航記錄器，它們會記錄駕駛艙的對話、對飛機機載電子系統下的指令，以及其他一系列重要資料。如果發生了飛航事故，第一件事就是向大眾公開來自這些飛航記錄器的資料，這樣才能建立該意外的原因並檢討程序，以及在必要時立即進行改變，讓同樣的墜機事件永遠不會再發生。
這種開放迴路學習的成果是，商業飛行取得了非常令人驚嘆的安全記錄。當美國陸軍在1912年開始訓練飛行員時，14個飛行員會有8個死於墜機。相反的在2013年時，全世界3640萬商業班機載運超過30億名乘客，卻只有204個人因空難死亡──比率是每240萬架飛機發生1次事故。這項數據在2014年甚至降得更低，即每830萬架班機發生1次事故。
拿健康照護來對比前述案例。在2013年，有名的《病患安全期刊》公布了一項研究，估計僅僅是美國的醫院每年就有大約40萬名病患，因為可以避免的傷害而死亡──如錯誤診斷、配藥錯誤、在手術過程中受傷、治療部位出錯、不當輸血、摔倒、燒傷、手術後併發症等等。每年40萬名病患相當於在一整年中，每天24個小時就有2架巨無霸客機從天上掉下來。
然而健康照護產業並未使用這些事故，來辨識系統性的失誤，亦即導致這麼多病患死亡的根本原因，反而把這些死亡當作一個一個孤立的悲劇。絲毫沒有從這些發生的事情中學習的想法，反而採取一種「封閉迴路」的態度對待每一個病患的死亡。結果，幾乎很少或完全沒有學到任何東西。
| 邊飛邊試，邊試邊飛 |
在火箭科學中，「邊飛邊試、邊試邊飛」意味著必須在模擬現實條件的實驗中測試理論。任何測試的目的都不是為了找出對的事，而是要找出可能出錯的地方及導致出錯的原因。要在真實條件下進行測試，而非實驗室裡人工打造的理想環境。
在商業情境下，這意味著你應該挑選具代表性的客群，針對產品原型或服務的初始版本，進行前導測試。但這些測試應該是針對最壞情況設計，而非針對理想的最佳結果。你不僅要嚴格測試單一零件，還要包括系統整體的表現。
太空人因擁有「真材實料」聞名，但實際上他們得接受各式各樣的訓練。對他們來說，訓練6年才能獲派執行8天的太空飛行任務並不罕見。他們不是靠飛上太空討生活，但卻得花上所有時間和精力進行培訓和準備。 等他們開始執行任務時，他們已經經歷過無數次的模擬器飛行，任何可以想見的重大挫折一次又一次落在他們身上。如此一來，當他們遇上真實狀況時，他們就能保持鎮定、理性行動，而不是像小鹿被車頭燈一照就僵住了。
| Try Things With a View to Failing Fast and Failing Often |
In the real world, significant achievements always arise on the back of lots of failures and mistakes along the way. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs call this phenomena "failing forward" – you fail as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible by finding out what doesn't work first. It's accepted that you're far better off getting a prototype out into the marketplace and then improving it with customer feedback than you are staying isolated in the lab trying to get things perfect first.
A great example of using fast failures to learn is Pixar Animation Studios. Ed Catmull, one of the cofounders of Pixar, once described their creative process as going from "suck" to "non-suck." When Pixar starts making a movie, the creative team sift through thousands of half- baked ideas and downright clunkers. They will revise a script literally thousands of times before they get something they like. By giving themselves permission to fail initially until they get it right, they weed out the bad ideas and keep refining what they have.
The reality is the path to something great always lies through a minefield of flops, bad ideas which don't work out and failed initial efforts. If you want to get better at something, you've got to be prepared to do it badly while you're learning the ropes. It's in the doing of something that most learning happens, not in the planning
| The Science of Failure |
The airline industry is one of the most safety-critical industries in the world today. All commercial aircraft are fitted with two almost indestructible flight recorders which record conversations in the cockpit, instructions sent to the aircraft's onboard electronics systems and an array of other vital data. If ever there is an air accident, the first thing that happens is the data from these flight recorders is released publicly so the reason for the accident can be established and procedures can be examined and if necessary changed immediately so the same aircrash never happens again.
As a result of this open loop of learning, commercial aviation has attained a very impressive safety record. When the U.S. Army started training pilots in 1912, eight of its fourteen trainee pilots died in crashes. By contrast, in 2013, there were 36.4 million commercial flights worldwide carrying more than 3 billion passengers and only 204 people died in air accidents – a rate of one accident per 2.4 million flights. In 2014, that number fell even lower with one accident for every 8.3 million flights.
Contrast that with health care. In 2013, the prestigious Journal of Patient Safety published a study which estimated that around 400,000 patients a year die in American hospitals alone through avoidable harm – misdiagnosis, dispensing the wrong drug, injuries during surgery, operating on the wrong part of the body, improper transfusions, falls, burns, postoperative complications, etc. 400,000 patients each year is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every twenty-four hours every day of the year.
Instead of using these incidents to identify systemic failures which are the root cause of so many patient deaths, the health care industry instead treats each of those deaths as a tragic standalone event. No attempt is made to learn from what's happening but instead health care has a "closed loop" approach to each patient death. As a result, little or no learning takes place.
| Test as You Fly, Fly as You Test |
In rocket science, "test as you fly, flay as you test" means you have to test your theories in experiments which mimic the real world conditions you will meet. The goal of any test is never to figure out what goes right, but to discover what can go wrong, and what its trigger point is. Test in real world conditions, not in the artificial, idealized world of the lab.
In a business setting, this means you should run pilot tests on prototypes or preliminary versions of products and services, on representative groups of customers. The tweak, however, is you should design these tests for worst-case scenarios rather then for idealized best-case outcomes. You have to rigorously test not just individual components, but also how the system as a whole performs as well.
Astronauts are famous for having "the right stuff" but the reality is they train exhaustively. It's not unusual for them to train for six years just so they can go on a mission to space for eight days. They don't fly in space for a living, but spend all their time and efforts training and preparing. By the time they get to go on a mission, they have already flown it on the simulator countless times, with every major setback that can be imagined thrown at them again and again. That way when they hit the real thing, they're calm and can act rationally rather than freezing like deer in the headlights.
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NO.528 放手做，勇敢錯
Fail fast, fail often: How Losing Can Help You WIN
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