Brilliant failure

 

Image from Pixabay

No, I wasn't giving another presentation this week. This week I took a warm bath in the presentations of others, during the Love for your Trade week, organized by passionate colleagues. For three days there were stories and workshops from and by mainly colleagues. And a small number of external speakers (plus the great Lucas de Man as host).

In the program, one external speaker immediately caught my attention: Prof. Dr. Paul Iske , CFO (Chief Failure Officer) of the Institute for Brilliant Failures (IvBM). I was curious what that could be, a brilliant failure. And I expected some humor. That was certainly there, but prof. Iske's message was deadly serious: some things simply don't turn out as intended, while the people who worked diligently on them cannot be blamed. And there is a lot to learn from that. Failures are normal, Iske taught us.

Live on stage, our organization was the twentieth to sign the Universal Declaration of the Right to Fail Brilliantly. That declaration has five articles, the first two of which regulate reputation, psychological safety and the right to personal evolution. The next two give you the right to try and to be forgiven, to put things into perspective and to learn if an attempt to make something happen should fail. The final article gives shape to the universality of the statement: anyone is allowed to fail brilliantly, no matter who and what you are. The statement defines a brilliant failure as “an attempt to create value where no avoidable or culpable mistakes have been made and yet the originally desired outcome has not been achieved: learning has taken place and the learning experiences are shared.” The aim of the declaration is to “promote appreciation for these rights and freedoms and, through progressive measures, to ensure that these rights are generally and effectively recognized and applied”.

It seemed like such a brilliant idea, but for some reason it failed. The IvBM gives us sixteen tools to learn from our mistakes, the so-called archetypes (“universal lessons, patterns or learning moments”). I'll mention a few. When you deal with 'the light bulb', you are experimenting, working towards the solution through trial and error, just like making the very first viable light bulb. With “the banana peel” you have to deal with accidents that will happen. Like the AEG microwaves, which after an update thought they were steam ovens. And with “the empty place at the table” you have not involved all relevant parties in your project. This happened on the singing road in the province of Friesland, where a ribbed pattern on the road surface was intended to ensure that motorists adhered to the maximum speed, by playing the Frisian national anthem as a reward. Here they forgot that local residents might not take this well.

A presentation like this makes you wonder whether there exist brilliant failures in your own environments. I can neither confirm nor deny – for, uh, security reasons – that I encounter them in my daily work. But I can have a closer look at my own work, and that is quite exciting. Especially to write about it. But hey, we signed that declaration, so nothing can happen to me.

The Security (b)log has been around for thirteen years now; the five hundredth instalment will soon be published. In all modesty I can say that it is a success, and management shares that opinion. Statistics, comments and spontaneous pats on the back at the coffee machine support this. In 2016 we thought it was a shame to keep all this beauty to ourselves and the blog went external (on Blogspot and LinkedIn). Moreover, there has also been this English-language version for two years now – we have more and more non-Dutch-speaking colleagues and the whole world can enjoy it, right? If the figures from Google Analytics and LinkedIn are anything to go by, the reach of external publications lags far behind the internal version. I must say that these figures are a bit difficult to interpret: on Blogspot (a Google service) I sometimes see unlikely numbers of readers from distant countries (even for the Dutch version), and LinkedIn gives figures for 'impressions' and 'views' that are far apart. A handful of regular readers give it a thumbs up every week (thanks!), supplemented by a changing but modest audience. Now, I'm not someone who expresses appreciation for everything myself, but if you're on the receiving end, it's nice to get some feedback. But only if you really like the piece, right?

In the IvBM learning environment, BriMis, you can check your own project against the archetypes. If I run my external blog through them, three pop up. First, 'the right half of the brain': “Some people are unpredictable and/or inconsistent in their reactions and decisions and that introduces an extra degree of uncertainty.” Those are the silent readers. The second, 'the skin of the bear', indicates, among other things, that your approach must also work in other circumstances. This refers to the external publication. And finally there is 'the junk': “the inability or unwillingness to stop syndrome”. That's me. And maybe I also have to deal with 'the empty place at the table', because I barely have a clue of my external audience. Moreover, that audience probably consists mainly of colleagues, while my actual target group is 'ordinary people’. Help me move forward, dear reader, by giving me feedback and by drawing the attention of people around you to the Security (b)log. Thank you in advance!

No Security (b)log will appear for the next two weeks.

 

And in the big bad world...

This section contains a selection of news articles I came across in the past week. Because the original version of this blog post is aimed at readers in the Netherlands, it contains some links to articles in Dutch. Where no language is indicated, the article is in English.

• someone here describes passkeys as a brilliant failure.
• you don't necessarily have to use a Microsoft account in Windows 11.
• a ransomware gang is also playing with the street lamps of the attacked municipality for fun.
• there is now also simple, cheap ransomware on the market, aimed at SME victims.
• Apps that allow you to share your location with others may of course also contain an error.
• We have been reading something about actions by state actors every week lately.
• these state actors are increasingly focusing on edge tools. [DUTCH]
• the Chinese were able to snoop around Volkswagen for five years. [DUTCH]
• you will hear with this tool when your computer sends data to Google.