Ducati Corse entered the Grand Prix motorcycle circuit for the first time in 2003. As newcomers on the circuit their strategy was to acquire knowledge in order to develop a better bike for future seasons.   They fitted their bikes with sensors to capture data and the riders were debriefed after every race to get input on handling, responsiveness and the other subjective criteria.

To their surprise the team finished the season in second place, pacing in the top three in nine races. Their bike was the fastest in the field. As the season progressed, the team focussed more and more on winning. They forgot about collecting data. They quickly forgot to learn from success.

Based on this experience the team radically redesigned their bike for the next season, replacing 60% of the components. But the new bike had serious handling problems. Though they were shooting for all out victory they finished third at the end of the season. A position they considered a failure.

This sense of failure triggered a process to re-examine their approach to developing bikes. Ducati Corse turned in solid performances in 2005 and 2006 and in 2007 they took the world title.

We know we can learn from failure. We know this learning does not just happen. We have to reflect on what happened, understand root causes and design new approaches. This requires hard work. We know this. What we often miss though is that it is as much work, to learn from success. Looking at data to understand failure is common sense. Looking at data to understand success is uncommon sense. Massive effort has been put into understanding the recent financial crash whereas little was done to understand why all was apparently going so well before.

The last thing we feel like doing on completion of a successful piece of work is to sit down to figure out what went well, what could be improved, and what was successful as a result of the external environment. Three common blind-spots prevent learning from success:

  1. We over-emphasise the role of personal attributes in our success. Without a detailed analysis of the data it was not possible for the team to know whether their success was due to bike design, race strategy, riders’ talents, bad decisions by other teams, luck, random events such as crashes or a complex combination of these and other factors. Incidentally we do the opposite when we fail. We disregard the capabilities of our competition when they succeed, maximising the role of luck and external factors. This is so common it has a name; the ‘Fundamental Attribution Error’.
  2. Our criteria for success are easily skewed. We fail to correct for the difficulty of the environment in comparing performance. Leaders who have steered a team to success in a difficult industry look less attractive than those who have succeeded in a profitable industry.
  3. We are prone to hubris. We need confidence to make decisions and perform in business. But success can lead to over-confidence and rash decisions. Overconfidence can affect whole organisations causing them to dismiss essential information.

If you want to learn from success and continue to grow, even when you are ahead, you may wish to consider these five strategies:

  1. Celebrate success but examine the reasons. Use the short window at the end of successful projects, tasks and events (including meetings) to critically evaluate reasons for success. Be open to the possibility that your success may, as likely, have been due to fortuitous events as much as your ability. Question what skills you should develop to increase your rate of success in the next project. Make this part of your culture.
  2. Institute systematic project review. Regardless of success or failure, review your performance to ascertain exactly what happened, what you set out to do, the reasons for outcomes and how you will go about it the next time. Pixar continue to conduct rigorous reviews as part of the creation process in spite of having eleven hits in a row. They use different ways to make the process more interesting. Solutions Focussed Coaching provides an excellent way to do this.
  3. Look for learning in the right time frame. It can take decades to gauge success or failure of initiatives in some industries. Focussing on the wrong period can be misleading.
  4. Don’t just repeat. Learn! Deciding to do more of what worked is a good start. However if all you have is a list of things to do the same way next time, you have failed. Delve into the root causes of success. What component of the process worked for you? Why are should you continue with that method? Will it work in a different environment? What makes it work for you? Instead of asking “What are we doing well?” Ask “how can we do more of what we do well?”
  5. Try new ideas. Subject your ideas to rigorous tests. Organisation experiments can be risky and expensive. Look for ways to prove ideas.