A failure is a failure

December reminds us of at least two major failures that have had a long lasting impact on our national psyche. Whether they were political or military failures or of defence or domestic policies remains debatable; at least one point is clear and that is we have not learnt the lessons that we should have.

When former chief of army staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa called the 1971 East-Pakistan tragedy a political rather than a military failure, it triggered a plethora of comments and articles in Pakistani media. Calling it a political failure of the leadership is an interesting way of putting things in a desired manner. If a political power struggle is going on in a hospital and there are deaths during surgeries, will they be medical or political failures? If a similar struggle is taking place in an educational institution and students are failing in exams, do we call it an academic failure or a political one?

The answer can again be debatable but let’s first try to understand failure itself. Amy Edmondson, a leadership and management professor at Harvard, says that the key to analyzing our failures is to realize that all failures are not the same. She has done extensive research on the concept of failure and how they impact entities, institutions and teams. She identifies three distinct types of failures and suggests that understanding these types may help us cope with the embarrassment that failures cause and also trigger some self-questioning. They are: preventable failures, complex failures, and intellectual failures.

Professor Edmondson suggests that the most obvious type of failures are ‘preventable failures’ that we have the knowledge and ability to prevent. Most failures in this category she considers ‘bad’. Such failures involve deviations from specifications in an operation or process. If there is proper support and training, the people involved can follow those processes consistently to prevent failures. Preventable failures occur when there is some deviance from the prescribed process or protocol to follow. Such deviance may be the result of inattention to detail or simply by a person in charge who lacks the ability to pay attention and follow the process.

For preventable failures, observers can readily identify causes and suggest solutions. If I didn’t study for an exam or test, I failed to follow the process required and it may result in my failure. This is preventable failure because understanding the subject matter was more important. Irrespective of the power struggle at a school, essentially it is my academic failure. If a doctor or patient deviates from the prescribed medicine, it may aggravate the illness and even result in death. Regardless of the power struggle in the hospital, it will be a medical failure not a political one.

Similarly, if you anger your fellow players by not following the rules that you are supposed to follow or not fulfilling the promises you made, even though it was your responsibility to do so, you cause a preventable failure. Even more important is the attitude you adopt during the process of failure and the behaviour you display afterwards. If one does not feel bad about oneself after causing the preventable failure, one’s behaviour is unreasonable. A feeling of uneasiness is not only necessary, it is reasonable too. If one does not feel any guilt about one’s laziness or reluctance to follow the rules of the game, one cannot hide behind a blame game.

If a doctor ends up killing the patient during an operation, he or she can’t blame it on the political struggle in that hospital. The refusal to take full responsibility for the failure smacks of arrogance from the top leadership that made the most important decisions. It is usually the result of a sense of entitlement that leaderships or institutions foster within, and keep nurturing it, even after the preventable failure. Prof Edmonton suggests that to minimize preventable failures, creating process-oriented rules, applying them, and learning from tiny failures is the best option.

Complex failures are the more complicated cousins of preventable failures. These occur when a combination of external and internal factors come together in a way to produce a failure outcome. The more complex and volatile the environment is, the more likelihood there is of a complex failure. These are unavoidable failures which make it difficult to assign responsibility for them. A particular combination of needs, people, and problems occur that’s never occurred before producing unpredictable situations. Prof Edmondson suggests that noticing small failures of this type is what prevents future mistakes.

Intellectual failures are those related to the learning potential of the people involved in a process, most of all the top decision-maker. Intellectual failures occur when the decision-maker has not properly learned the process itself or does not know what process should be followed. In preventable failure the process is clear and known but not followed; in intellectual failures it is more about scientific rather technological ineptness – not knowing the theory and botching up its application. Good operational decisions have to have some theoretical underpinnings, not knowing them causes intellectual failures.

An intellectually unsound mind is incapable of learning and is more likely to make errors of judgment with a clear lack of expertise in a given situation or the problem one is trying to tackle. Navigating into unchartered waters without adequate intellectual capacity is one of the main causes in such failures. In that situation one starts experimenting that doesn’t go well. The best course in such situations for the decision-maker – or for the decision-making institution – is to be honest about one’s own or institutional shortcomings; but a lack of intellectual capacity at individual or institutional level prevents such admission or confession.

Ideally, all types of failures should provide valuable new knowledge that can help an individual or institution leap ahead. Unintelligent individuals and institutions keep conducting experiments and keep failing but refuse to learn. One should contemplate all failures and not ignore or rationalize them. Failure should be a way to learn and not to provide excuses for it by shifting the blame.

From 1955 to 1971, the top leadership comprising senior military officers created a series of preventable failures that graduated into complex failures. They never sparked any embarrassment or self-questioning. Initially, they had the knowledge and ability to prevent these failures, but they never felt bad about them. They deviated from the process specifications given in the constitution and the law of the land, in fact they flouted and mocked the constitution and the law that had defined processes.

Martial law is termination of the law. Maj-Gen Iskandar Mirza, Gen Ayub Khan and Gen Yahya Khan enjoyed immense power and arrogated to themselves an entitlement they should never have usurped. They did not understand the subject-matter and pushed the country to a journey of preventable failures.

In 1971, Gen Yahya Khan was the commander-in-chief and the chief martial law administrator (CMLA). Neither Bhutto nor Mujib had the authority or power to initiate a military action of this magnitude. Gen Yahya enjoyed full support – apart from some rare exceptions such as Admiral Ahsan and Lt-Gen Sahebzada Yaqoob.

In the final analysis, perhaps it was a failure that combined all three types of failures discussed above.

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He tweets @NaazirMahmood and can be reached at:

mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk