Title:
How Failure Can Lead to Long-Lasting Knowledge
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English
Education Report.
No one likes to make mistakes. But a new study says
organizations learn more from their failures than
their successes, and keep that knowledge longer. One
of the researchers was Vinit Desai, an assistant
professor at the University of Colorado Denver
Business School. He worked with Peter Madsen from
the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young
University in Utah. They did not find much long-term
"organizational learning" from success. It is
possible, they say. But Professor Desai says they
found that knowledge gained from failure lasts for
years. He says organizations should treat failures
as a learning opportunity and not try to ignore
them. The study looked at companies and
organizations that launch satellites and other space
vehicles. Professor Desai compared two American
space shuttle flights. In two thousand two, a piece
of insulating material broke off during launch and
damaged a rocket on the Atlantis. Still, the flight
was considered a success. Then, in early two
thousand three, a piece of insulation struck the
Columbia during launch. This time, the shuttle broke
apart on re-entry and the seven crew members died.
NASA officials suspended all flights and an
investigation led to suggested changes. Professor
Desai says the search for solutions after a failure
can make leaders more open-minded. He points to
airlines as an example of an industry that has
learned from failures in the past. He advises
organizations to look for useful information in
small failures and failures they avoided. The
mistakes we learn from do not have to be our own. We
asked people on our Facebook page to tell us a time
they had done something really silly. Fabricio
Cimino wrote: Not long ago I wanted to watch TV, but
it wouldn't turn on, so I did everything I could to
start it. Thirty minutes later my mum shows up and,
passing by, says to me "Did you try plugging it?" I
was like "I'm just dusting, Mum!" so she wouldn't
notice how dumb I am sometimes!Bruno Kanieski da
Silva told about a time he looked everywhere for his
key. It was in his pocket. He wrote: I always
promise I will never do it again, but after a few
weeks ... where is my wallet? For sure it will be in
a very logical place. You can find more comments
like these on Facebook at VOA Learning English. For
VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
