Repeated unsuccessful experiments are abandoned before they can be made to work, producing endless novelty and no accumulated competence.
Because new activities usually perform badly at first, an organisation that judges quickly abandons them and tries something else, which also performs badly at first. The cycle generates constant change and no learning. It is the opposite failure to the success trap and is more often mistaken for dynamism.
In practice
- A company on its fourth strategic direction in five years has not tested any of them.
- A team that changes tooling annually is permanently at the bottom of a learning curve.
- Standing
- Paired with the success trap.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- Why organisations learn, harden and decline