CDR Salamander has a post today called “Be Nice to Nerds,” a TED talk by Regina Dugan. Dugan asks a question which captures the essence of To Be or To Do: “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” Dugan encourages listeners to not allow failure to dictate their path and their actions. Good advice, but in a larger sense, how does your culture/organization deal with failure? Do you and your colleagues learn from failure, or is failure avoided or punished?
Failure is ubiquitous. How you and your colleagues deal with failure will define the quality of your culture. A To Be or To Do culture encourages individual curiosity and individual action—-and learns from failures; coping, adapting, and growing.