Engagement Technique: Failing Up
Most workplaces say they encourage innovation. Then someone tries something, it fails, and everyone quietly decides not to do that again.
But what if you embraced that mistake?
The idea is simple: instead of hiding failures, you review them openly and constructively. Not to assign blame, but to learn.
This is essentially a post-mortem for a mistake, project, experiment, or initiative.
The goal isn’t to celebrate failure itself, the goal is to celebrate learning.
How it works
Pick a project, initiative, campaign, or experiment that didn’t achieve the intended result.
Then discuss:
- What were we trying to achieve?
- What actually happened?
- What assumptions did we make?
- What did we learn?
- What would we do differently next time?
- What should we repeat?
The conversation should focus on facts and learning, not individuals. The moment it becomes “who messed this up?” you’ve lost the point of the exercise.
Organisations (often unintentionally) create a culture where people only share successes. The problem is that most learning comes from things that didn’t go according to plan.
Failing Up helps teams:
- Become more comfortable with experimentation
- Reduce blame culture
- Increase accountability
- Share lessons across the business
- Build psychological safety
When people know they won’t be punished for a well-intentioned mistake, they’re more likely to bring ideas forward in the future.
It’s particularly useful when linked to innovation initiatives such as the Innovation Challenge or Joegan’s Den, where employees are encouraged to try new approaches and ideas.
What to watch out for
This is a more advanced engagement technique, because it requires trust – If your culture currently focuses on blame, performance management, or finding someone to hold responsible, this exercise can feel uncomfortable, so maybe look at some trust building techniques before trying exercises like this, if that sounds like your company.
Focus on systems before people, reward learning – make sure you’re not forcing people to share something that is potentially triggering or is a highly sensitive failure. Leaders can help by going first, it gives everyone else permission to do the same.
Takeaway
Failing Up helps organisations move from:
“Who caused this?”
to
“What did this teach us?”
The companies that improve fastest aren’t necessarily the ones that make the fewest mistakes.
They’re often the ones that learn from them most effectively.
This post is part of our Engagement Techniques series of practical, low-cost ideas to bring more connection and meaning into work. Find the rest here
👉 Want to explore techniques like this in more depth? I run interactive employee engagement workshops where we bring these ideas to life.