Think We’d Keep Our Failure Wall Private? Think Again

Recently, our Malibu office was thrilled to host Nita Lelyveld of the Los Angeles Times at our office!   And as much as we enjoyed spending time with her, we also enjoyed the resulting article that where she poignantly captured the culture our CEO Jeff Stibel promotes:

Failure of a well-considered and -executed action is nothing to be afraid, ashamed, or embarrassed of, since we all encounter it at some point en route to success.

Jeff describes it best in his own words:

The Failure Wall has become a central theme that captures the companies culture. More than a few employees when on high alerts when they saw that the LA Times account was tweeting out or “failures,”it was all great stuff and we thought we’d share some of the highlighted tweets here.

Some failures on the wall are funny: http://t.co/2cbWsTEd—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Some come from workers' personal blooper reels: http://t.co/hk4HPAlN—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Some are technical descriptions of errors on the job: http://t.co/cRYumYo0—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

It isn't hard to figure out the lessons learned in many of them: http://t.co/SXK6UiD6—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

A lot of Internet start-up veterans work @DandB: http://t.co/zfEwJNjK—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

The wall is a mix of the professional… http://t.co/zH6NiaMu—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Put yourself in these shoes for a sec: http://t.co/1LDyMjEj—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

and the very personal. It can be cathartic to admit some things: http://t.co/uhofjGH4—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Many of the failures are ones a lot of people can relate to, like this: http://t.co/IGT2mJM5—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Or this: http://t.co/aieWdxQd—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Or this: http://t.co/6pk4AebJ—
LA Times City Beat (@LATimescitybeat) January 28, 2013

Are you a company owner who would consider adding a “Failure Wall” at your work?   As an employee, do you think it makes sense to celebrate calculated failures as a business strategy?   Why/why not?  We look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!

Update:

This story about our Failure Wall picked up  some steam. Here’s where it went:

• Los Angeles Magazine summarized the article published by the LA Times and kindly pointed out that writing one’s failures on a wall is very different from pet shaming;
  
• The Los Angeles Business Journal did a quick blurb;
• Jeff did an awesome video interview with Huffington Post Live that you’re missing out if you haven’t seen;
• Nita Lelyveld, who wrote the original piece, also did a fun storify with many pictures;
• NPR and KFI both reported the story as well.

Suffice to say, we very much enjoyed the buzz. Did you hear about our Failure Wall from some other source? Tell us where in the comments