Excerpt taken off chapter 7 of the best-selling management book: "in Search of Excellence Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies" by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr.
A special attribute of the success-oriented, positive, and innovating environment is a substantial tolerance for failure. James Burke, Johnson & Johnson's CEO, says one of J & J's tenets is that "you've got to be willing to fail". He adds that General Johnson, J & J's founder, said to him, "If I wasn't making mistakes, I wasn't making decisions." Emerson's Charles Knight argues: "You need the ability to fail. You cannot innovate unless you are willing to accept mistakes." Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture - and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won't learn.
One vital observation about failure: it's a lot less punishing with regular dialogue. The big failures, the ones that really leave scars, are usually the ones in which a project was allowed to go on for years without serious guidance. Such eventualities rarely occur in the no-holds-barred communication environment at the excellent companies. The exchange is frank and honest. You can't hide the really bad news, and you don't want or need to.
So the champion's supports are many. The specific devices unearthed number in the hundreds; the evidence presented barely scratches the surface of our data bank. None is a panacea. Each is merely illustrative. The skein of interlocked - and everchanging - supports per se is the message.
Specifically, champions don't automatically emerge. They emerge because history and numerous supports encourage them to, nurture them through trying times, celebrate their successes, and nurse them through occasional failures. But given the supports, the would-be champion population turns out to be enormous, certainly not limited to a handful of creative marvels.
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