Why the Best Companies Reward Failure

Updated

The video below is taken from an interview that Motley Fool analyst Brendan Byrnes recently had with Seth Godin, author of The Icarus Deception. Godin is also a talented public speaker, marketing guru, blogger, entrepreneur, and respected thought leader.

Seth's forward-thinking and contrarian views are critical considerations for finding success in life, business, and investing.

It's the same approach our own chief investment officer, Andy Cross, took when selecting The Motley Fool's Top Stock for 2013. I invite you to uncover his market beating thinking in this new free report. Just click here now for instant access.


Transcript:

Brendan Byrnes: How do you think companies can use these principles to improve their culture? We know Google has their 20% rule, where employees use 20% of their time to work on projects they would like to work on; Apple recently applying the same thing.

Is that one way they can do this? How else do you think employers can embrace this?

Seth Godin: Here's the secret to innovation. If you are saying to all your employees, "Innovate, innovate, innovate," but you give the Employee of the Month parking space to the person who never screwed up and you give the bonus and the vacation to the person who doesn't make mistakes, you are not serious about innovation, and your team knows it.

The way they will know you're serious about innovation is when you reward and promote people who make mistakes, and you fire people who don't. If you do that just a few times, the entire company is going to change.

The article Why the Best Companies Reward Failure originally appeared on Fool.com.

Brendan Byrnes owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Google. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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