Sounds like an odd statement to make. Right?

Recently, I had the opportunity to be a presenter at the Spring 2010 National Forum of the Arts Education Partnership in Washington, DC. One of the many perks of attending this event was to hear speeches by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman during the opening plenary.

The following is an excerpt from Chairman Landesman’s speech referencing his view on the role failure could play in K-12 education. A full transcript of his speech can be found here.

What if we took a different lesson from the arts? One that would drastically re-form our learning environments. What if we took away the lesson of failure?

I am not talking about the still too many public schools that fail our students. Or the students who fail out of school entirely. I am talking about “productive failure,” failure that stimulates adaption and helps students find alternate pathways to success.

I am talking about IDEO, the leading design company in the world, which has as its motto “Fail often and succeed sooner.”

I am talking about Charles Schwab, whose businesses experienced so many failures, mixed in with a few key successes, that his company coined the term “noble failures.”

I am talking about Butler, the [NCAA Basketball] team that “failed” on Monday night. Their coach (little older than a public school student himself…) certainly has them already training for March Madness 2011.

And I am talking about the video game designer who described his job as “making it fun to fail.” If you die on level four of “Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian,” what is any child’s reaction? To pick up the joy stick — or the Wii — and try to get to level five. You can have a blast failing.

Productive failure … fail often and succeed sooner … failure as inspiration and drive … failure as fun … failure as permission to try again. These are the values of successful members of American industry. But we are not really talking about this in our schools. Many schools are not teaching the art of innovation, the art of the productive, noble, fun failure.

I think that most of us would agree that this makes sense. You probably can think of many other companies that value failure as key to their continued growth and success. Here in Oregon, Intel comes to mind.

But why aren’t we seeing this type of thinking in action in more organizations today? He goes on to say…

How many water lilies did Monet paint, trying to get them just right? How many times did we workshop Angels in America? How many times did Kurt practice hitting that high note in “Defying Gravity” on Glee?

Yes, it happens in other subjects, too: if Columbus hadn’t failed in sailing to India, I probably wouldn’t be here today. If Alexander Fleming hadn’t failed to clean up his lab before an August holiday, we wouldn’t have penicillin. We underestimate the role of chance, of luck, and of perseverance through failure.

So let me turn to Elizabeth Streb, as a final example. If she hadn’t failed at using the traditional vocabulary of dance, she wouldn’t have a MacArthur. For those who don’t know her, Elizabeth Streb is a brilliant choreographer who runs what is most often described as a trapeze studio in Brooklyn. Early in her career, she attempted to use the traditional vocabulary of dance to express herself. She failed at that, persevered through it, and invented her own vocabulary of movement, creating the language of “action mechanics” and going on to create performances without precedent.

Her company now regularly “fails” at its home in Brooklyn. They fail while trying to do things like fall upward, dance with elephants, and generally attempt the pretty much impossible. Every once in awhile, they succeed. But most often they fail. And both the failures and the successes make wonderful performances.

Okay, so you understand the value in failing better but where do you start?

First, your organization needs to acknowledge failure as a critical component to continuous improvement and success.

Then you need to figure out what that looks like in practice. And you’ll need to address fear.

Fear of taking a risk. Fear of taking action. Fear of the consequences that may come if things don’t work out perfectly the first time (they often don’t). Fear that trying something new will put you at risk with your boss. Or, worse yet, that it will put your job in jeopardy.

I believe that fear is the one of the primary reasons people and organizations get stuck in unproductive behavior in times of change or great stress. It’s a lesson that has been brought into even greater clarity during the economic struggles of the past few years.

Addressing fear and figuring how to bring more failure into your organization for the sake of success is hard work and requires the best of everyone within your organization.

This is one of the many sandboxes we like to play in here at The Canoe Group.

How does your organization value failure? Share your successes or more importantly lessons learned. We’d love to hear from you.