On learning organisations, perfect imperfection and why vulnerability is not a weakness

By Ayla Kaya & Stefanie Setzer ·  May 19th, 2026  ·  Prof. Dr. Sarah Hatfield & Prof. Dr. Peter Cocron 

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Let’s be honest. This blog post is being written two weeks after the session. No notes. No recordings. Just vibes, vague memories and the faint trauma of trying to draw with the wrong hand. For a course that explores, failure – this is almost poetic.

Let´s start with a concrete example:

Seven NASA engineers knew that the O-rings could fail in cold temperatures. They said so. Nobody listened – or wanted to. On January 28, 1986, the Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch. This was not a technical failure. It was a cultural failure. So, we asked ourselves: how different would the world be if organisations and people actually learned from their mistakes?

Two Sessions. One Big Theme.

The seminar brought together two perspectives that may seem different at first glance, but share a common thread: what does it take for mistakes to be used rather than hidden?

Prof. Dr. Sarah Hatfield opened with the concept of the learning organisation and launched straight into three real-world disasters: the 1986 NASA Challenger catastrophe, the 2010 Toyota recall crisis and the 2011 Netflix Qwikster fiasco. In all three cases, the root cause was not the technology or the strategy, but the organisational culture: too much pressure, too much silence, too little psychological safety.

Prof. Dr. Peter Cocron approached the same theme from a psychological angle through the concept of “Perfect Imperfection”. Rather than theory, he started with a simple, almost provocative task: draw a picture using your non-dominant hand. What followed was a lively exchange about perfectionism, loss of control and the question of why we would rather not start something at all than do it imperfectly.

Both parts posed the same fundamental question: Why is it so hard for us as individuals and as organisations to allow imperfection? And what do we lose because of it?

The three case studies at a glance:

NASA, Toyota, and Netflix represent three different failure types – organizational silence, growth at the expense of quality, decisions without customer perspective,  but the same insight: the mistake itself isn’t the problem. What happens next is.

All three drew structural conclusions rather than cosmetic ones: creating safe reporting channels, reframing problems as learning assets rather than failures and  in Netflix’s case – actively seeking dissent before the next decision is made.

The Moments That Made Us Think

Insight 1: Psychological safety is the foundation for everything

Edmondson & Lei (2014) show that teams only truly learn when mistakes are not used against individuals. Without this foundation, people stay silent – even when they know something is going wrong. That is exactly what happened with Challenger. Psychological safety means: being allowed to ask questions, admit mistakes and disagree without fear of embarrassment or consequences.

Insight 2: Single-loop vs. double-loop learning – the difference between a plaster and a cure

This was our personal aha-moment of the week. Single-loop means: problem spotted, quickly fixed, move on. Double-loop means: why did this problem arise? What needs to fundamentally change? Toyota example: a car has brake problems (single-loop: recall and fix). But why were warning signs ignored for years? That is the double-loop question and exactly the one organisations often do not want to ask.

Insight 3: The Ovsiankina Effect – the unfinished pulls us in

Prof. Cocron introduced the research of Maria Rickers Ovsiankina: people tend to spontaneously resume interrupted tasks without being asked. A meta-analysis by Ghibelini & Meir (2025) shows this happens in roughly two thirds of all cases. What does this mean for perfectionism? Those who never start a task because it might not be perfect are robbing themselves of this natural learning pull. Ovsiankina herself described it as a need to scratch when something itches.

Insight 4: Vulnerability is not weakness – it is courage

Brené Brown’s quote, which Prof. Hatfield opened the session with, stayed in the room:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of learning, innovation, and change.”

~ Brené Brown

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings demonstrated this concretely: he said publicly “I messed up”, reversed the Qwikster decision and rebuilt customer trust. Vulnerability – admitting mistakes – is, in this context, a strategic strength, not an emotional moment.

Where Do We See This in Real Life?

The concepts from this seminar week are not abstract management theories, they show up everywhere. In sports, for example: teams that openly discuss mistakes in debriefs learn faster than those who sweep them under the rug. In student life: how often do we start a presentation only the night before, because we want to “do it properly” first? That is perfectionism-driven procrastination and it costs far more than starting early and imperfectly.

Prof. Cocron’s drawing task made this tangible in the most literal way. Drawing with your non-dominant hand feels wrong. The lines are shaky, the proportions are off and yet: the task gets done. It’s not perfect, but it’s fulfilled. Even if that wasn’t the only point of the exercise.

To give you a sense of what that looks like in practice, here’s an example an AI put together afterwards. Not from the session itself, but the same idea:

Now, if you want to experience that same productive frustration yourself, you can try and continue drawing with your weaker hand 😉: https://excalidraw.com/#room=eba66973e8925771dbad,y3vaszN4LfKV5uflNjn0vQ

What Has Changed for Us?

This seminar did something quietly uncomfortable: it held up a mirror to our own perfectionism. The drawing task made it visceral. Before the pencil even touched the paper, the inner critic was already running: what if it looks terrible, what if it’s not good enough? That hesitation, that freeze before the start, is exactly the mechanism that keeps individuals and organisations stuck.

The insight we’re taking away is simple, but not easy: starting is already enough. Not starting perfectly. Not starting when conditions are right. Just starting. An imperfect first draft, a messy sketch, a left-hand drawing. These are not failures waiting to happen. They are the actual work.

We tend to think of perfectionism as a high standard. But often it’s a hiding strategy. If you never start, you never have to find out whether it was good enough. The irony is that in protecting ourselves from imperfection, we also protect ourselves from learning, from growth. Perfectly imperfect is not a consolation prize. It might just be the only honest way to do anything worth doing.

Perfectionism and the Ovsiankina Effect are two sides of the same coin. One pulls you back to unfinished things. The other can paralyze you from ever starting – or resuming – because what if it’s not good enough?

This session didn’t answer that tension. It just made us feel it. In our hands, literally. And maybe that’s enough for now.

Written from memory, two weeks late, with love and zero notes. Perfectly imperfect.

Want to Dive Deeper?

Video: Brené Brown — The Power of Vulnerability (TED Talk, ~20 min) — the classic starting point on vulnerability and courage.

Article: Edmondson, Amy & Lei, Zhike. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. 1. 23-43. 10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305.

Study: Ghibellini, R., Meier, B. Interruption, recall and resumption: a meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 962 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05000-w