There's been quite a lot of interest in the value of failure recently. In Japan, they are way ahead of us. A 70-year-old academic called Yotaro Hatamura has been called in by the Japanese government to help understand what went wrong at Fukushima:
Mr. Hatamura runs a consulting group, the Association for the Study of Failure, which studies how to apply lessons from past blunders to prevent future recurrences. He also heads up the government-financed Failure Database Project, which similarly investigates and draws lessons from famous foibles. Over the years, Mr. Hatamura’s failure-focused organization has also compiled several past analyses on nuclear-power plant accidents, including a study on Fukushima Daiichi and another Tepco-operated plant.
The academic gained a strong following in Japan with his 2000 best-selling book 'Recommendation Of Learning From Mistakes', a standout compared with the rows of books on success stories and a unique approach to business management that turned Japan’s traditional mentality on how not to make mistakes on its head. Mr. Hatamura has said that a major obstacle facing Japanese companies is to own up to their mistakes, examining minor errors and realizing the important lesson before it develops into a grave problem.
Apparently Mr Hatamura concluded that the biggest lesson of Chernobyl disaster was that "bad things are bad". I love this. It is my new motto.
Perhaps our government should be consulting with Mr Hatamura. Then again, according to David Brooks, there's no need because everything is going just swimmingly.
Yeah, what did you think of that fawning Brooks piece? Usually (especially over the past couple years) he seems more often than not to diagnose things spot-on, but this...I mean, I've just returned from nearly a month in the UK, and nearly everyone I spoke with - dry and wet Tories, (former, to the last of them) Lib Dems, lifelong Labour voters, and so on - seemed pessimistic and downright cheesed off. The ones who voted 'yes' for AV didn't feel any love (anymore, had they earlier) for the coalition and the Labour 'yes' voters were hardly more sanguine, and the ones who voted 'no' seemed generally despondent about the direction of UK politics despite having 'won' the referendum...and then there's the whole SNP surge up in them thar Scottish hills...so who on earth has been palling around with and influencing Brooks during his sojourn in Britain?!
Posted by: Lyle | May 26, 2011 at 11:23 AM