9 Reasons for Failure (Regardless of Industry or

Department)
1. Inadequate training
Enabling employees to complete tasks properly, and with minimal mistakes, requires time and
effort. When people do not understand what they are doing or how to do it optimally, there is a
higher chance of making mistakes or failing to complete tasks altogether. Mitigate this risk by
providing all employees with adequate training.

2. Lack of information
Working without sufficient or relevant information is just as bad as not being trained. Access to
information and clear information-sharing techniques are important for capacitating your workers
to complete their work. You need to make sure workers have all the information they need to
complete their tasks with confidence.

3. Low confidence
If employees do not have confidence and understanding, it will have an impact on the quality of
their work and their performance. Increasing confidence goes hand in hand with training and
providing sufficient information, but also includes promoting a culture of openness where
everybody feels that they can ask for more information if needed.

4. Complex systems
Some surroundings and functions will have more chance of failure and mistakes than others. This
means a failure could be inherent to a system based on its complexity. There is usually a limited
set of improvements to reduce the complexity itself, but as general rule of thumb, all steps in a
process should be well-documented in order to increase the likelihood of succeeding.

5. Ill-discipline or negligence
Other times, failures happen as a result of the employee’s negligence. This involves failure to abide
by departmental or operational procedures, or disregarding rules and methods. The root causes
vary and might be about organizational problems, individual relationships with supervisors or lack
of motivation as a whole. Thus, offering a turnkey solution is impossible but being aware of these
issues is always the beginning. To do that, having a low-threshold incident reporting platform helps
a lot.
6. Not learning from past mistakes
A huge cause of repeated failures and mistakes is that organizations do not address the root causes
of failure the first time around. These unaddressed problems are like snowballs starting to roll
down from the top of a mountain, getting bigger and bigger as more time passes. To avoid this,
push to understand underlying issues, mitigate them, document the corrective actions, and make
sure relevant people are being trained based on this new information.

7. Poor reporting channels

Poor incident or issue reporting channels and policies can cause blockages in identifying and
resolving issues. To learn from past mistakes, you need to enable the possibility for employees to
report and notify you when mistakes happen. To do this, you need to have a proper channel, make
sure people know how to find it, and make the reporting itself as effortless as it can be.

8. A lack of strategic communication

If the strategy of your department or business isn't communicated properly, employees won’t know
their goals or how to best execute their everyday work. This makes it more likely that they will
face problems and failures. To address this, make sure that everybody understands both the bigger
scope and how their role plays into achieving it. As an additional tip, we highly recommend
organizations to look into both KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and OKRs (Objectives and Key
Results).

9. Incompetent management
The role of management and a manager is key for minimizing failures and mistakes. Managers are
responsible for defining clear plans and goals, conducting quality checks, and organizing and
monitoring subordinates. Without these, the likelihood of unchecked mistakes and failures
increases. To decrease the risk of managerial fails, make sure that managers have the support they
need by providing them with both relevant tools and personal advice to succeed.
 9 Reasons for Recovering from Failure
1. Stop complaining.

Yes, your efforts didn't get the result you wanted. Yes, it's a disappointment. However, every
second you spend complaining about the situation is only setting your failure into concrete. Vent
once or twice, then suck it up.

2. Take responsibility.

Your epic fail wasn't because of the market, competition, customer, economy, or anything else that
was out of your control. You failed because you weren't smart enough to adapt to circumstances.
Period. If you start blaming things that are outside your control for your failure, you're handing
your future destiny over to "luck" and the uncontrollable. Accept responsibility. You screwed up.
Live with it.

3. Forgive yourself.

It's only after you've taken full responsibility for your epic fail that you can afford to give yourself
some slack. As long as you remember that there's no such thing as an "A for effort," it's fine to
take pride in the fact that you did your best. Assuming you did, of course.

4. Celebrate the failure.

This is the most difficult part, but probably the most important. Consider: It's impossible to have
an epic fail if you're not attempting something epic. You were dreaming more than 99 percent of
the people in this world ever do. Yeah, it would have been great if you'd won, but the real loser
isn't the one who plays and fails, it's the person who never dares to play at all. So celebrate already.

5. Debrief yourself.

Stand back from the situation and ask yourself these questions:

1. What did I do that worked?

2. What did I do that didn't work?
3. What could/should I have done differently?
4. What did I miss completely?

Since this is an epic fail, you should plan on spending at least a week (with few distractions) really
thinking about these questions and coming up with written, detailed answers.
6. Recommit yourself.

Now it's time to put the failure behind you. It happened and you've learned what you can from it.
The only question now is: Can you summon the emotional strength to move forward and try again?
Be honest with yourself. If the answer is no, you're done with that goal. Let it go. Find something
else to do that really gets you motivated. If the answer is yes, then continuing to treat success as a
must. Recommit yourself to do whatever it takes (within legal and ethical bounds) to achieve an
epic success.

7. Create a new plan.

Based on what you've learned from the epic fail, create a plan of action that will lead you toward
your goal. If you've truly recommitted yourself, creating this plan will get you energized and
excited. However, if you feel any "oh God, not again" dread and the plan isn't motivating you, you
haven't really done the previous step. Go back to step 6 and really decide. It has to be 100 percent
commitment or it's not worth bothering.

8. Reality-check your plan.

Now that you've got the plan, run it by somebody whom you trust and who has experience
achieving this kind of goal. For example, if you're making another run at starting your own
business, get a local entrepreneur to critique your new business plan.

9. Execute the plan.

Take massive action to create momentum. Whenever anything reminds you of your epic fail, use
that emotional energy to drive you forward. As I said, I've used this method repeatedly to recover
from some pretty epic failures in my life.

Syed Asif Ali

HR, Admin & Labor Law Professional
alisyedasif5@gmail.com