Why Movie Production Teams Do Not Learn From Failure

We love those wonderful stories about how people learn from failure. We champion the practices in certain industries (such as healthcare, the military, and commercial aviation) in which organizations improve based on systematic reflection. Yet, in a new study, Suresh Muthulingam and Kumar Rajaram find that Hollywood production teams do not seem to learn from failure effectively.  Perhaps we should not be surprised, as we have all witnessed highly publicized films, with top actors, flop spectacularly at the box office. 

Why is learning from failure difficult in the movie business?  The UCLA Anderson Review summarizes these scholars' findings: 

So why does failure appear to stick rather than teach? The researchers point to three structural barriers. First, fluid teams disband before the financial verdict arrives, so there is no collective moment of reckoning. Second, individuals tend to blame losses on external factors or other team members rather than examining their own contributions. Third, movie production lacks the kind of systematic post-failure review that exists in aviation or medicine.

The implications stretch beyond Hollywood. Any industry that relies on project-based teams assembled for a single engagement — teams that are dissolved afterward — may face similar dynamics. The research suggests that managers assembling such teams should pay close attention to the collective financial track record of members, particularly those in coordinating roles like producers who bring the group together.

These three points are right on point and consistent with my work and the research of other scholars about learning from failure.  First, stable teams have an opportunity to iterate, to reflect and learn.  Harvard's Richard Hackman once demonstrated the importance of stability, and the perils of instability, in his research on airplane cockpit crews.   Second, the fundamental attribution error is very real.  People tend to blame the person when others fail, but they blame external circumstances when failing themselves.  Finally, you learn effectively if you have a systematic process for evaluating, reflecting, and putting new techniques into practice.  The After Action Review used by the U.S. military is one such successful systematic practice, now employed by many companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell, as well as by many healthcare organizations.   

Why Don't We Reflect & Learn?

Most leaders acknowledge the value of learning from past experience.  Some organizaitons have established highly regarded best practices for deriving lessons learned from past projects.  For instance, the U.S. Army pioneered the After-Action Review process, and it has documented the substantial benefits derived from the systematic use of this lessons learned methodology.  Still, most leaders don't spend nearly enough time faciltating these types of activities or empowering their people to engage in this type of work.  Why?  What seems to be preventing these powerful learning experiences from occurring in organizations?  The usual answer is time.  We hear responses such as the following:   "We would love to conduct postmorterms, but who has the time to perform that work?"  "We are always rushing off to implement the next set of plans."  "No one rewards you for taking time out to review and learn from past experiences."  

In my view, time represents a significant challenge, but these types of explanations often mask a deeper problem in the organization.  What are the true impediments to engaging in after-action reviews?

1.  Blame culture.  People fear that the process will degenerate into a finger-pointing exercise, rather than a true learning experience.  In these types of organizations, people fear talking about mistakes and how to learn from them, because they don't want to be accused of being part of the problem.  

2.  Lack of systemic thinking.  In many organizations, explanations of past failure tend to be individualistic, i.e. who was the rotten apple that needed to be thrown out of the bunch?  Learning organizations embrace systemic explanations for past success and failure, i.e. was the barrel rotten, and therefore, did it spoil some of the apples?  Systemic explanations for failures do not preclude managers from holding people accountable for negligent or irresponsible acts.   However, they help managers understand multiple factors that may contribute to success and failure. 

3.  Attribution error.   Psychologists have shown that people often attribute others' failures to character flaws, lack of expertise, or other internal deficiencies.  However, we explain our own failures quite differently.  We blame external events or factors beyond our control.  Such distortions in our attributions may explain why we do not engage in lessons learned exercises as frequently as we should. 

4.  Low leader self-awareness.  In some enterprises, leaders have tried to facilitate such after-action reviews, and the efforts have not been fruitful.  Thus, they choose not to spend time performing them again.  However, these leaders often are not aware that their presence and influece during the after-action review discouraged candid dialogue.  Thus, the group did not generate powerful lessons learned, as people refrained from discussing the tough issues.  Leaders sometimes lack the awareness to recognize how their behavior and presence may have distorted the dialogue during an after-action review process.  

We Don't Learn More From Our Failures Than Our Successes!

Ok, I'm frustrated with the cliche, "You learn more from your failures than your successes." Why? Well, for starters, it's not entirely true! You learn most effectively when you can COMPARE AND CONTRAST SUCCESS AND FAILURE! In so doing, you develop a much more accurate understanding of cause-effect relationships. Consider the research of Schmuel Ellis and Inbar Davidi, which I described in my last book. These researchers examined after-event reviews conducted by Israeli military forces. They compared soldiers who conducted post-event reflection exercises after successful and unsuccessful navigation exercises with soldiers who only reviewed failures. The scholars found that “contemplation of successful events stimulated the learners to generate more hypotheses about their performance.” The soldiers who systematically analyzed both successes and failures developed richer mental models of cause and effect. Perhaps most importantly, these soldiers performed better on subsequent missions!

In addition to the importance of comparison and contrast, one other key psychological phenomenon makes the cliche problematic.  When we examine the causes of failure, we experience the fundamental attribution error.  When others fail, we look inside of them, and we blame their lack of knowledge, experience, and the like.  However, when we fail, we tend to look outside of ourselves. We blame "unexpected external forces" or some other cause not of our own doing.  The fundamental attribution error prevents us from learning effectively from our failures.

So, let's stop with the cliche!  We learn by comparing our successes and failures!