Why it matters
Grey Advertising has run an award for “failures of daring and audacity” — ambitious attempts that went down in flames. Celebrating the attempt removes the shame from intelligent risk and shows what boldness looks like.
How to run it
- Define heroic. Ambitious, thoughtful, and something the organisation learned from.
- Invite nominations — including self-nominations.
- Tell the story: what was attempted, why it was bold, what didn’t work, what was learned.
- Make senior leaders go first. A leader sharing their own heroic failure does more than any policy.
Watch out for
- Rewarding sloppiness instead of courage
- Leaders never nominating their own failures