HENNGE’s Growth Mindset: Transforming Failures into Fuel for Continuous Improvement
Cel Ogiya
At HENNGE, making mistakes early is all part of the process—it’s how we ensure we deliver the best products to our customers that truly matter. We’re all about creating a culture of curiosity and learning, so we’re not afraid to take that first bite, even if the fruits of technology are still unripe.
Can’t wait to sink your teeth into the freshest tech and get a taste of the best bunch? Here’s a glimpse of how HENNGE celebrates intelligent failures and the valuable lessons they bring.
Read on to gain insights from HENNGE team members as they share their thoughts on failure, recount personal experiences, and learn how HENNGE turns challenges into opportunities for growth.
As the saying goes, "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." In today’s fast-paced world, failure often feels like a major hurdle that leaves us trailing behind. When we scroll through our social media feeds, we're often bombarded with posts highlighting the best moments of other people's lives—someone landed that dream job, drove a roaring new Tesla, or trotted the globe with a dachshund sporting a rhinestone collar that could be pawned to pay off our mounting electric bills. Meanwhile, we might find ourselves stuck in a rut, unable to move past recent setbacks, and wondering who stole the cookie from our cookie jar.
Debunking the Myth of Failure
Like the glass half-full/half-empty dilemma, failure isn't inherently good or bad. Not all failures are alike, and some can lead to new discoveries and opportunities. As HENNGE's President and CEO Kazuhiro Ogura puts it, “Trying new things, experiencing failure, and learning from it drives our cycle of innovation.”
Dr. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, defines failure as an outcome that doesn't align with our expectations or desires. Dr. Edmondson categorizes failures into three archetypes: basic, complex, and intelligent.
Basic failures have single, identifiable causes and are usually preventable, often occurring in familiar situations where a crucial step is missed. Think of it like forgetting to add baking yeast to your bread dough and wondering why it didn’t rise to your expectations.
Complex failures, on the other hand, involve multiple causes—a chain of events or factors that converge at the wrong time, triggering a "perfect storm" where things start to fall apart like forlorn dominoes. Complex failures happen in semi-familiar environments and can often be avoided. An example of this would be a software engineer working on a system upgrade but skips a compatibility check (relationship compatibility included), resulting in the app—and their heart—crashing simultaneously.
In an organizational setting, basic and complex failures may happen when team members hesitate or feel anxious about speaking up when they notice something is off. Such failures could be avoided if concerns were raised early on in the process.
Fostering transparency and trust within the organization can encourage more intelligent failures and build a culture of innovation. This allows teams to explore new possibilities by trying and failing, rather than holding back due to fear of what might not work.
For Jon Gaul, a backend engineer at HENNGE, the best learning opportunities come from the company’s open and communicative culture that encourages asking questions and seeking clarifications from team members. Jon believes effective communication helps teams stay aligned and makes collaboration and decision-making smoother. “Mistakes are costly. Our top priority is safeguarding customer data, but we also have other stakeholders, like IT admins and HENNGE teams. HENNGE’s open culture and seeking feedback from diverse groups are crucial for keeping everyone satisfied,” Jon says.
Intelligent failures give us new insights and guide us forward by revealing valuable information we didn’t have before. This means looking at setbacks as a catalyst for learning, gradually bringing us closer to solutions that work.
For Dr Edmondson, intelligent failure is the outcome of a well-designed experiment while chartering an unknown territory. This could involve developing a new product at the right scale and avoiding excessive resource investment in projects that are least likely to succeed. Intelligent failure also means being willing to take a chance on achieving something no one has attempted before.
As an early adopter of new and emerging technologies, HENNGE jumps on board, even if it means hitting a few extra roadblocks. The company takes pride in tackling more failures and setbacks than its customers, all while riding the wave of change and pushing through obstacles.
Embracing Failure the HENNGE Way
For HENNGE, embracing intelligent failure is ingrained into its corporate DNA. Shaking up the status quo, exploring new frontiers, and trying out untested ideas are all part of the daily grind. This spirit of endless curiosity and passion for learning is deeply woven into the fabric of the work culture.
“We believe in taking on challenges, even if it means facing failure. It’s okay to fail 99 times while making meaningful progress and accelerating toward that one sweet success,” Ogura says.
HENNGE’s Take on Failure: Insights From Our Team
Go Nakakomi, Managing Director, HENNGE Taiwan
- “At HENNGE, we encourage everyone to tackle challenges head-on, no matter the outcome or the risk of failure. Mistakes are seen as unwanted or unintentional results, which means there's an expected goal in mind. When someone recognizes a mistake, they can analyze what went wrong and learn from it. If they can learn, they can improve and do better next time.”
Jazman Barizi, People Division, Engineering Talent Acquisition Section
- “My core value in life is learning, and failure is part of that journey. If I stop learning, that means I stop living. For me, failure is just as important as acquiring new knowledge and applying it in my daily life.
“As the person responsible for HENNGE’s Global Employer Branding activities, I initially faced challenges while learning to run advertising content on social media platforms to raise awareness about our company among our target audience. I had to experiment a lot to find the right targeting and content strategy. I experienced a series of setbacks: low engagement rates, ads failing to reach the desired audience, and accounts getting banned for violating ad policies I didn’t know before—the list goes on.
“Now, I can confidently say that I have a better understanding of how things work and can implement effective advertising strategies in my employer branding efforts. I’m truly grateful that the company encourages us to fail faster to learn better. My supervisor simply asked what I learned from those experiences and what my next plan of action would be. This approach has made me more eager to try new things without fear of failure.”
Rina Pokharel, Customer Success Division, Renewal Management Section
- “Failure is a stepping stone to success and allows people to reflect on how they can improve next time. This process drives me to learn, adapt, and become better at what I do.
“When I first started using AI to create content for facilitating the English learning of my team members, I focused too much on the content and overlooked the user experience. I realized I needed to make changes to create more interactive content that prioritized users’ needs.
“HENNGE encourages a ‘make mistakes early’ mentality, and our corporate culture supports risk-taking and learning from setbacks. We have initiatives like Inspire Matsuri, where we can submit ideas and carry them through the pitch stage. This kind of supportive environment makes everyone feel safe to experiment and push boundaries.”
Hans Christian Gunawan, Cloud Product Development Division
- “Failure serves as a rehearsal phase before success. As an engineer, I see failing early during the development process as important for improving systems before they reach users.
“Last year, I misconfigured an application on AWS, resulting in a 70,000 percent increase in daily costs. Thankfully, our monitoring system detected the issue early, preventing any impact on customers. Eventually, this incident confirmed the effectiveness of our newly developed cost monitoring system and taught me that failure can drive team success.
“HENNGE is open to exploring new things. We have sandboxes and safeguards that enable risk-taking without affecting others. There’s no blame culture at HENNGE; instead, we focus on learning from our experiences for future challenges.”
Alina Dorozhkina, People Division, Talent Acquisition Section
- “Failure is a foundation for learning and growth. The lessons we learn from failures become deeply ingrained in our minds. As an example, I once miscalculated the budget for an event and underestimated the expenditure. This experience taught me the importance of precise budgeting and effective stress management. At HENNGE, people are quite tolerant of failures and view them as a valuable opportunity for the team to learn and improve.”
Masataka Kameyama, Corporate Communication Division, Design Management Section
- “I see failure as a learning experience. However, the more I consider its potential consequences, the more fear I feel when facing challenges. If I’m the only one affected, like in a video game, I’m unafraid and eager to try again. However, when my actions could impact teammates or projects, fear sometimes holds me back. My biggest concern is losing the trust of my colleagues.
“As a product designer and design lead, I’ve struggled with decision-making in the past. For instance, when faced with two promising options—or even none—I often hesitated, leaving the choice to others or postponing discussions, which sometimes caused delays. My indecision has negatively impacted the team more than any potential risks from my decisions. A project leader introduced me to the concept of ‘Get Things Done,’ which emphasizes that we won’t know what works without first trying. However, I still fear losing my colleagues' trust due to failure. To overcome this, it’s important for teams to respect the decisions made by the designated decision-maker and cultivate a shared understanding.
“I see two types of failures: one from embracing a challenge, and the other from missing an opportunity out of fear of challenge. HENNGE respects failures that arise from taking risks. As someone like me who fears losing others' trust due to failure, HENNGE’s culture of learning and growth is reassuring.”
At HENNGE, failure is an option and a launchpad for collaborative learning. Find out more about our current openings at https://recruit.hennge.com/en/mid-career-ngh/ and see how your skills can play a role in our journey of growth and endless possibilities.