In January, I visited a partner company, a very successful one, that never ceases to amaze me with its order and simplicity. Inside their office building, part of the space has been turned into a museum, a place where they collected their history, development, and key milestones.
The most fascinating part of the museum for me was a corner they called the Chamber of Horrors, where they display products that failed. At first glance, these devices look no different from the ones that earned a place in the museum as successful, still-used products. What was wrong with them was invisible to the eye.
Next to each failed product was a short note: the name and how much money was invested in it. For some, investments reached up to 10 million euros!
I paused at that number.
Ten million euros isn’t just money.
It represents years of work.
Teams.
Presentations, beliefs, hopes, plans, sleepless nights.
It’s the faith that it would succeed.
The company has continued this way of working, investing in technology and improving their products while listening to market feedback. Regardless of the failures it had.
They honored these failures by leaving a small corner as a reminder that sometimes, no matter how much you want something in life, no matter how hard you try and believe in it, it simply doesn’t work out.
Imagine the concept of publicly acknowledging failure.
They didn’t erase it from corporate history.
They didn’t hide it in annual reports.
They gave it space and honored it.
And in doing so, they sent a clear message: we are a company that tries. And trying carries risk.
How many companies today hide their own Chambers of Horrors?
How many companies truly allow mistakes to be seen?
How many companies really learn from them?
And we as individuals, where do we keep our “horrors”?
In a corner of forgetfulness, suffocating in dust?
Or have they somewhere earned their own honorable space, like a Chamber of Horrors?
Let’s dust them off and allow ourselves to see how much we’ve grown through our failures.
Because they are not proof that we didn’t succeed, but proof that we had the courage to try.
#Leadership #ReflectiveLeadership #PersonalGrowth #ProfessionalGrowth
#TeamDevelopment #TalentManagement #HighPotential #TallPoppies
#OrganizationalCulture #StrategicThinking #ChamberofHorrors