Embrace your failure!

Earlier this month, I published two posts that were directly connected to current political issues in the United States, first here and then (as a follow-up) here. The political issue in question was illegal immigration. My focus in the articles was: first, to review the results of the Administration's recent "root cause" policy on immigration; and second, to suggest how the Administration's root cause analysis could have been improved—possibly to support a more effective policy, but at any rate to be completer than it was. And my overriding imperative was to handle the subject in a non-political way.

After I published the first article, a good friend argued that if I really thought I could keep the discussion non-political, then I was fooling myself. More exactly, her argument was as follows:

• Since Vice President Harris was put in charge of the "root cause" policy, any evaluation of the policy will necessarily be construed by others as an evaluation of her. If I say that the policy failed, readers will construe me to mean that she personally failed.
• Any personal evaluation of the success or failure of a candidate for the Presidency—if expressed during the middle of a campaign—will necessarily be construed by others as a partisan statement, either an endorsement or an attack. If I say that a candidate failed at something, readers will construe me to have attacked the candidate.
• Therefore I shouldn't publish such an article unless I am prepared for my writing to be used as artillery in the campaign by one side or the other.

We talked about it for a while, and I told her I disagree for at least two reasons. In the first place, I simply don't have that wide a reach. Mostly my posts are read by a small pool of people interested in aspects of the Quality business. And it's highly unlikely that anything I say about the technicalities of root cause analysis will drive you to change your vote. I assume you already know how you are going to vote, and nothing I say will make the slightest difference.

More importantly, the whole point of Quality analysis is that we can learn from our mistakes by analyzing them, so that we do better next time. In this sense, it is critical to embrace your failures, and not hide them! Because when we fail at something, it's never on purpose. Always we think we are doing the right thing; we have a plan of some kind, and we are following it with the intention of reaching a goal. This is what deliberate behavior looks like. But the consequence is that the very next time we have another goal, we'll do exactly the same thing—unless something stops us. Unless we intervene with ourselves to make a change.

If our plan is right and we succeed, of course that's fine. But if we fail—that's when it gets important to pay attention. If we fail, that means the plan wasn't right, which in turn means that there was something we missed when we analyzed the situation. If we aren't careful, we'll miss the same thing again next time and fail in the same way. Conversely, if we don't want to fail the same way next time, we have to figure out what we missed last time and take care not to miss it again.

This is why we have to own our failures and understand them.

As for the Administration's "root cause" policy on immigration, when I say that it failed that's no more than a historical fact. The plan was that by taking these actions, the Administration intended to bring about those outcomes. But in fact the actual outcomes were very nearly the opposite of what the Administration had in mind. (I explain the details in my article, and give links to external documentation that substantiates all the historical data.) 

OK, fine. This happens all the time, to administrations from both parties. There's nothing partisan in recognizing the facts. The next step should be to look at the analysis and find the flaw, so that the next time around will be better.

Of course, there are a lot of moving parts in any political situation. And right now we are facing an election. It is unlikely that today's Administration will launch a major new initiative in the last months of this year. Maybe something will be done next year, but at this point we don't know who will be responsible then. So it's hard to know what to expect.

But understanding your failures is still a really valuable thing to do.