The Wall Street Journal recently published an article I wrote with my UC Berkeley and Princeton colleague John Danner.  The article is entitled: "How Not to Flunk at Failure" and builds on the work we did for our recent book: “The Other “F” Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work”

The gist: We all know that we should learn from our mistakes. It seems simple. So why is it that we so often ignore this common-sense advice, especially in business environments?

In this article we identify four actions that leaders of all types can take to help turn failure from a regret to a strategic resource that can drive innovation, growth, and a more productive culture with engaged employees:

1. Acknowledge your own fallibility, along with lessons learned from those setbacks.

2. Ask the right questions when a failure occurs, and in the right order.

3. Borrow perspectives and language from disciplines other than business, such as science and engineering.

4. Make the endings count to drive the culture of innovation and engagement you seek.

Here’s the link to the article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-not-to-flunk-at-failure-1445824928?alg=y

I will be giving a number of upcoming talks on this topic, located up and down California. If you are interested these talks are open to the public:

• November 9, Santa Monica: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-other-f-word-failure-and-how-successful-leaders-put-it-to-work-tickets-19064061120?aff=ebrowse

• November 10, Santa Barbara: http://www.tmp.ucsb.edu/calendar/event/distinguished-speaker-series-mark-coopersmith

• November 12, San Francisco https://thirsty-thursday-the-other-f-word.eventbrite.com

Hope to see you soon!

best,

Mark