Why reviewing success generates even more success

Steven Paul is an executive leader and board director. He brings a fresh perspective to creating high-impact boards, building businesses, leadership and strategic alignment, transformation. His passion is to help companies achieve growth and develop authentic leaders.

As human beings we are naturally (and usually) programmed to evaluate and learn mostly from failure. Most executive leaders I've talked to spoke about the lessons that they personally had from failures. They also believed that learning from it was straightforward because one could reflect on what they did wrong in order to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

In a business or organizational setting, failure is sometimes inevitable. In my experience of working with diverse executive leaders and firms, learning from leadership or organizational failures is anything but straightforward. This is because there are multi-dimensional factors to be considered, such as the need for a broader shift in behaviors and attitudes to unlearn those elements that caused the failure.

Failure (and the review after) is not always bad. But what about reviewing success?