Embrace small failures, Panera Brands Chairman says

(Jan. 2024) In uncertain times, resilient companies should embrace small failures.

That’s the advice of Niren Chaudhary, Chairman of Panera Brands. In a talk at the Drucker Forum in Vienna with Huawei Editor-in-Chief Gavin Allen, Chaudhary says small failures are positive, as long as they are part of a continuous cycle of improvement.

“Smaller failures are on that virtuous cycle of innovation, which is ‘Do, fail, learn, and repeat.’ And those kinds of mini failures, the small failures, you have to encourage,” he says. “Without that, by definition, you cannot improve.”

But leaders must create a culture where failure – and what might be called constructive conflict – are okay.

“I try to encourage disagreement, divergence over convergence, one conversation at a time,” he says. “When you celebrate people who disagree with you, and thank them for their input, that then becomes the expected culture. And people feel safer to disagree, to debate, and then to be more willing to fail.”