Managing and Learning from Failure in Agile Organizations

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Organizations should focus on finding and seizing new opportunities while also being willing to let go of unsuccessful endeavors. Managers and leaders can achieve this by following a four-phase approach: thinking big, testing small, failing fast, and learning always. It is crucial for companies to set clear criteria and deadlines to assess the success of their initiatives. If a product fails to meet expectations, the company should pull back but continue to learn and share knowledge within their ecosystem.

What can we learn from fast-moving companies—like Amazon, Google, and Alibaba—about how to organize to promote strategic growth?

University of Michigan business professor Dave Ulrich went inside these companies to study how their internal structure keeps them nimble, innovative, and market-oriented.

“That mental model of what an organization is, it’s about power, it’s about control, it’s about clarifying decision rights,” he tells IdeaCast host Curt Nickisch. “I think that mental model of an organization as a control system has basically got to shift.”

In this episode, Ulrich outlines three key capabilities that these newer companies have developed: monitoring the marketplace, sharing that intelligence company-wide, and innovation.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, business management, market intelligence, Google, Alibaba, technology, uncertainty, flux, agile.

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· Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: How Companies Like Google and Alibaba Respond to Fast-Moving Markets (2019)

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