Do you know SUCCESS breeds FAILURE? Find out how?

When we fail, the first thing we intuitively ask is, “What went wrong?” When we succeed, the first thing that comes to mind is, “I was right, and I can do it again”.  

Francesca Gino andGary Pisano point to three barriers to learning — all of which are associated with success.

1. Fundamental attribution errors:  When we succeed, we attribute it to our own skills and current strategy. Sometimes, however, we’re just plain lucky.
2. Overconfidence bias. Once thing success does breed is self-confidence. Good stuff, that, but too much of it gives us overconfidence that our next effort will be jus as successful.
3. Failure-to-ask-why syndrome. We tend to investigate why things go wrong, but not why they go right. “When executives and their teams suffer from this syndrome,” write  Gino and Pisano, “they don’t ask the tough questions that would help them expand their knowledge or alter their assumptions about how the world works.”

To remedy these tendencies, leaders need to think counter-intuitively. “Managers must actively test their theories, even when they seem to be working, and rigorously investigate the causes of both good and bad performance,” according to the researchers. “Ironically, casting a critical eye on your success can better prepare you to avoid failure. Some may consider this to be an art. But in fact it is much more of a science.”