Before now, mistakes used to be taboos but there is How Upward-Moving Organizations Learn & Grow, Part 1. Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures? This sounds ironic. Isn’t it?
In May 2017, after becoming CEO of Coca-Cola Co, James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to GET BEYOND THE FEAR OF FAILURE THAT HAD DOGGED THE COMPANY since the “New Coke” fiasco of so many years ago. Please corporate giant CocaCola is been talked about. “If we’re not making mistakes, we’re not trying hard enough”, Quincey insisted. Wow!
Just a month after, in June 2017, even amid unparalleled success with subscribers, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings worried about his fabulously valuable streaming service. He told a technology conference, ” WE HAVE TO TAKE MORE RISK… TO TRY MORE CRAZY THINGS… WE SHOULD HAVE A HIGHER CANCEL RATE OVERALL”.
What of Jeffrey Bezos? Arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the world, the Amazon CEO, makes the case as directly as he can that his company’s GROWTH AND INNOVATION IS BUILT ON ITS FAILURES. Please managers, leaders, and my mentees, pay attention to what Bezos said now. “if you’re going to take bold bets, they are going to be experiments, you don’t know if they’re going to work. Experiments are by nature prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens of things that didn’t work.” 
These CEOs’ messages are easy to understand as it’s hard to put into practice. Why: It is How upward-moving organizations learn & grow.
Sir, in Nigeria here, we visit CEOs, CEs, organizations, and governments. They extol the virtues of our innovations and creativity, yet so many of these leaders and organizations live in fear of mistakes, missteps, and disappointments. They blame the government and the economy, thereby stopping themselves from the next move, and having abysmal or no progress. 
Now, let me face you. Hear from Entrepreneurial Sage and Management Pundit. “If you’re not prepared to fail, you’re are not prepared to learn. All learning processes are filled with failings. Unless people/organizations manage to keep learning as fast the world is changing, they will never keep growing and evolving” – Mike Ihezuo (2016).
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