Editorial: Learning from success and failure in action

Public service organizations are awash with earnest plans to improve—but how far are those intentions genuinely based on learning from success and failure in action, rather than on formal policies, strategies and plans? Proposals and analysis abound, from policy-makers, practitioners and academics, about improving the efficiency, effectiveness and legitimacy of public services. However, less attention is paid to organizations learning from their own and other’s failures, near misses and successes.

Of course, there are inquiries and investigations when there are large, egregious failures in public service. Politicians or public professionals assert on TV that ‘lessons will be learned’ from failures, errors and mistakes but these are sometimes soundbites to get through a difficult period of ‘blame-gaming’ by the media (Resodihardjo, 2019). Large and expensive inquiries are sometimes established, ending with long lists of recommendations for change, which, in the context of ‘bounded rationality’ (limitations on what humans can handle cognitively), can be overwhelming, with the consequent fear that trying to implement recommendations will increase blame. Blame is not conducive to learning (Tomkins et al., 2020).

Cannon and Edmondson (2005) argue that an organization’s ability to learn from failure is best assessed by how it deals with results which deviate from desired expectations (large and small failures), rather than how it deals with major disasters. Rather than focus on major disasters then, this Public Money & Management theme focuses on how organizations can learn from everyday failures. Not only that, the theme editors argue that success is often overlooked in the theory and practice of public management, yet can also be an important source of learning. We are pleased to include articles (Douglas, 2021; Compton et al., 2021) which help to rebalance the picture by taking learning from success seriously.

The inspiration for this PMM theme arose from an academic/practitioner conference in the policing field which considered success, near miss and failure as a basis for learning, but the theme has much wider relevance across public service organizations.

Success and failure as siblings

Farson and Keyes (2002) conceptualized success and failure as siblings, which suggests that there is common genetic material between them and that they generally share a home environment. An effective leader, they say, will amass learning about both. However, it is easy to see how, if the two were your own offspring, one might demand considerably more of your attention than the other.

Public service organizations are multi-functional and work with a range of diverse stakeholders, so this means that success in the eyes of some people will be failure in the eyes of others or that success can sometimes only be the least-worst outcome. This ambiguity is ever-present in public service organizations. It means that while there may be some consensus over certain failures (for example a death in custody, laboratory analysis mistakes), there may also be elements of success and failure which are subjective, depending on the values and views of particular people.

near miss can be a reminder that the difference between success and failure may be a question of mere seconds or millimetres, reinforcing the closeness of success and failure. Some service sectors, such as aviation and parts of policing and healthcare, address near miss with established learning procedures including detailed debriefing. The fact that only one article (Chase, 2021) explicitly references near miss points to a potential gap in research and practice.

Many public service organizations are complex systems, operating in complex societies. Services are expected to provide efficient and effective benefits for a range of societal stakeholders in fair, transparent and accountable ways, at least in liberal democracies. So failures are inevitable. They may also change over time, with a service or process at one point hailed a success but later seen to have flaws or problems (or solving one problem but creating others). Some failures may be seen in hindsight as fortunate or beneficial. Some are avoidable, some unavoidable, and some may even be desirable. The question is not only how to prevent unwanted failures (where possible) but how to accept that failures will happen and, in the case of intelligent failure, how to safely make it happen and to extract the greatest possible learning. Identifying failures (rather than denying them or covering them up) is the first step in learning, but also there is a need for clear and calm analysis (in spite of the often hot emotions surrounding failure in organizational settings) prior to taking action.

A common theme in our articles is that failure or success in themselves are rarely black and white but that they may be more nuanced according to how public actors and institutions regard them, make sense of them, and set cultures around them (for example Hartley & Knell, 2021). These subjective elements can be unpacked and explained through drawing on the three perspectives about public organizations developed by Christensen et al. (2020). Their first lens considers organizations as having tasks and goals which need to be carried out efficiently and effectively using instrumental rationality. So there are formal structures and procedures, explicit formal goals and an interest in cause and effect (involving a logic of consequence). Evidence is gathered systematically in order to design goals, processes and to evaluate outcomes (for example Morris & Walley, 2021; Jones & Rienties, 2021; Sutton-Vane, 2021). However, means–end understanding is always incomplete, and complexity along with the plurality of stakeholders means that there will be unintended consequences in many settings (both failures and successes).

Christensen et al. (2020) have a second, cultural, perspective. Organizations consist of informal norms, practices and values, so that practices are assessed by whether they feel right (involving a logic of appropriateness). Practices are adopted or abandoned according to whether they fit the internal culture, and failures and successes are perceived and handled according to ‘the way we do things around here’. Failures may be addressed in cultural ways, such as denial and blame or through curiosity and analysis according to the informal norms of the section, team or organization (for example Hartley & Knell, 2021; Miller, 2021; Alison et al., 2021; Chase, 2021).

Christensen et al.’s (2020) third perspective is myth. Myths are widely-spread norms and stories, originating outside the organization, about what is right or good for organizations. It includes fashions in management, recipes for improvement, what is on trend in public service reform, taken-for-granted beliefs about efficiency and effectiveness, often without empirical grounding or contextual relevance. Myths, in this sense are about gaining legitimacy from external sources. Failure, near miss and success may be judged according to how closely or not the prevailing ‘recipes’ have been followed (for example Harding, 2021; Compton et al., 2021; Douglas, 2021).

We suggest that the articles in our theme can be read through at least one and sometimes several of these perspectives. They are a reminder that success, near miss and failure can be subjective, temporal, cultural and mythic as well as instrumental and data-driven

Learning, remembering, and actioning

The importance of learning by and within organizations to survive and be successful and in ever-changing environments is recognized as critical across sectors (Argote, 2011). Public service organizations are subject to pressures for learning and improvement deriving from users’ expectations; multi-level governance with structures and partnerships across tiers of government and services; and across a wide range of stakeholders (Rashman et al., 2009). Learning may be undertaken by and between individuals, groups, communities and organizations.

Appreciating the value of learning in social and organizational contexts (Brown & Duguid, 1991) is a theme across several articles (for example Alison et al., 2021; Harding, 2021), and several contributors point out that such learning is often hard won through triumph, mundanity and adversity (for example Douglas, 2021; Compton et al., 2021) to create insights and understanding that shed light on problems both practical and theoretical. They suggest that learning is an active process that engages knowledge of past events in acts of remembering, and thus learning and remembering are inter-twined. Learning as an active pursuit is intimately linked to the ability to frame, assess and access past and present explicit and tacit knowledge (for example Hartley & Knell, 2021; Harding, 2021; Jones & Rienties, 2021).

Acquisition of new learning is important but not likely to be sufficient unless it is stored, interpreted and used in ways which are accessible for the future and used and adapted appropriately in particular organizational contexts (for example Morris & Walley, 2021; Sutton-Vane, 2021).

A number of our contributors note the importance of taking a cyclical evidence-based approach to actioning learning—that it is not just a case of identifying the learning that has occurred and capturing it in a format that can be readily shared, but, importantly, it is also about transferring that learning into practice by completing cycles of action, reflection and assessment (for example Miller, 2021; Morris & Walley, 2021). Actioning learning can change processes, behaviours and practices and is often aided by organizational cultures which are open to curiosity and, where appropriate, experimentation. Learning from success and failure can be integral to that culture of curiosity (for example Hartley & Knell, 2021). Several contributors suggest that one of the values gained from a constructive approach to failure and learning is the ability to establish and sustain a culture of continuous improvement (for example Morris & Walley, 2021; Harding, 2021; Alison et al., 2021).

Each of the articles can be considered as a call to action, to learn and remember more effectively. A call to engage success, near miss, or failure through new frameworks of understanding, but equally a call to actively utilize the insights and learning gained to better inform and enact both academic and practical endeavour.

Storytelling

The theme of storytelling, and its links with success, near miss and failure, is mentioned in many articles (for example Alison et al., 2021; Harding, 2021). It is not possible to talk about stories, without thinking about the importance of their endings or ‘resolutions’. We are all familiar with the old adage that stories must have ‘a beginning, a middle and an end’. However, as is argued stories about government cannot, or do not, always resolve. Indeed, this lack of resolution can in itself be advantageous, because it allows for the story to become a precursor to what happens next, encouraging curiosity about what unfolds (Douglas, 2021). It can also sometimes, if used prospectively, allow us to imagine previously unencountered possible outcomes (Alison et al., 2021). It might be argued then that it is the lack of resolution that enables a story to do its work in creating personal development and preparedness for the future in practitioners and organizations.

Of course stories, by their nature, are highly specific. People do not often tell stories about sets of circumstances where everything proceeds as expected (Hutto, 2007). Stories put individuals in the grip of a particular set of circumstances and this capacity of story to focus on individual cases, rather than generic rules, enables us to focus on very specific details of particular successful cases (Compton et al., 2021). This capacity for the unique circumstances of stories allows light to be shone on particular bright spots of public service practice.

Stories of course also carry with them the baggage of newsworthiness. Stories of failure tend to sell themselves in the media, catching attention. Articles here set down the challenge of telling positive stories about government success, rather than simply bemoaning the negative lens that exists (Douglas, 2021). Historically stories about public service might have been in the hands of print or news media who could therefore very much ‘craft’ a particular frame for stories, and put themselves in the position of all powerful narrator (Lieberman et al., 2013). However, in the digital media era (Compton et al., 2021), citizens and other stakeholders can join in the act of creation and narration of any story (Walkington et al., 2018). In this context one person’s success story might quickly be re-told as another’s failure. The stories of today are therefore more fragmented, with citizens taking a more active part in the storytelling that often happens online, creating the potential for smaller stories to lead the way, rather than the grand narratives of the past

A final and significant contribution of story in the articles relates to the identity work that stories do. While we might enjoy fictional heroes being in some way better than us, stronger, or more clever or ambitious, in stories about public service it is likely the audience is seeking something that they can relate to and see some of themselves in.

Conclusions

In spite of commentators, whether inside or outside public organizations, concentrating more on failure than on success, this themed issue shows that learning and action can be derived from both, and also from their conceptual cousin, near miss. If success and failure are two sides of the same coin, then understanding the processes by which different outcomes are achieved is critical and avoids superficial labelling of one as ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad’. Sitkin (1992) argues that considerable learning can be gained from failure because it forces deeper thinking about assumptions than occurs with successes because assumptions have been broken. On the other hand, public organizations have generally not paid sufficient attention to success and some articles here point to the value to be derived from celebrating but also learning from success.

The themes of the ‘difficult’ relationship between the siblings of success and failure; the importance of learning and practice; and the telling of stories, stand out for the editors but readers will find their own bright spots in this themed issue. As societies continue to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath, the sense of re-emergence that can arise when we face adversity is never more apparent. This has in itself, been a time in which learning from success, near miss and failure at personal, organization and societal levels has been, or should be, paramount.