Passage 2 Directions (1-5): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. The wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet organisation that do it well are extraordinarily rare. This gap is not due to a lack of commitment to learning. Managers in the vast majority of enterprises that I have studied over the past 20 years--pharmaceutical, financial services, product design, telecommunications, and construction companies; hospitals; and NASA’s space shuttle program, among other--genuinely wanted to help their organisations learn from failures to improve future performance. In some cases they and their teams had devoted many hours to after-action reviews, postmortems, and the like. But time after time I saw that these painstaking efforts led to no real change. The reason:Those managers were thinking about failure the wrong way. Most executives I‘ve talked to believe that failure is bad (of course). They also believe that learning from it is pretty straightforward:Ask people to reflect on what they did wrong and exhort them to avoid similar mistakes in the future--or, better yet, assign a team to review and write a report on what happened and then distribute it throughout the organisation. These widely held beliefs are misguided. First, failure is not always bad. In organisational life , it is sometimes bad, sometimes inevitable, and sometimes even good. Second, learning from organisation failures is anything but straightforward. The attitudes and activities required to effectively detect and analyze failures are in short supply in most companies, and the need for context-specific learning strategies is underappreciated. Organisations need new and better ways to go beyond lessons that are superficial ( P r o c e d u r e s w e r e n ‘ t f o llo we d ‖ ) o r s e l f - s e r ving ( T he market just wasn‘t ready for our great new product‖). That means jettisoning old cultural beliefs and stereotypical notions of success and embracing failure‘s lessons. Leaders can begin by understanding how the blame game gets in the way. The Blame Game Failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most households, organisations, and cultures. Every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. That is why so few organisations have shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised. Executives I‘ve interviewed in organisations as different as hospitals and investment banks admit to being torn; How can they respond constructively to failures without giving rise to an anything-goes attitude? If people aren‘t blamed for failures, what will ensure that they try as hard as possible to do their best work? This concern is based on a false dichotomy . In actuality, a culture that makes it safe to admit and report on failure canand in some organisational contexts must coexist with high standards for performance. To understand why, look at the exhibit ― A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure, ‖ which lists causes ranging from deliberate deviation to thoughtful experimentation. Which of these causes involve blameworthy actions? Deliberate deviance, first on the list, obviously warrants blame. But inattention might not. If it results from a lack of effort, perhaps it‘s blameworthy. But if it results from fatigue near the end of an overly long shift, the manager who assigned the shift is more at fault than the employee. As we go down the list, it gets more and more difficult to find blameworthy acts. In fact, a failure resulting from thoughtful experimentation that generates valuable information may actually be praiseworthy. When I ask executives to consider this spectrum and then to estimate how many of the failures in their organisation are truly blameworthy, their answers are usually in single digits--perhaps 2% to 5%. But when I ask how many are treated as blameworthy, they say (After a pause or a laugh) 70% to 90%. The unfortunate consequence is that many failures go unreported and their lessons are lost. A sophisticated understanding of failure‘s causes and contexts will help to avoid the blame game and institute an effective strategy for learning from failure. Although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organisations, mistakes fall into three broad categories; preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent. Meanings of difficult words/ phrases (1) painstaking (Adj.): needing a lot of care, effort and attention to detail (2) Inevitable (Adj.): unavoidable (3) to-torn: very badly affected/damaged by something. (4) deviance (N.): a difference from what most people consider to be normal/acceptable (5) spectrum (N.): a complete/wide range of related qualities, ideas, etc. 1 ) Which of the following statements (S) is/are TRUE in the context of the give passage? I. Most executives believe that failure is bad and learning from it is pretty straightforward. II. The wisdom of learning from failure is disputable. III. Deliberate deviance, first on the list of the exhibit, ― A Spectrum of Reasons for Failure ‖ obviously warrants blame. (a) Only I ( b ) Both I and III (c) Both II and III ( d ) Both I and II (e) All three I, II and III 2 ) Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE in the context of the give passage? (a) Organisation need new and better ways to go beyond lessons that are superficial or self serving. (b) Leaders can begin by understanding how the blame game gets in the way. (c) The writer of this article has studied managers in the vast majority of enterprises over the past 30 years. (d) Failure and fault are truly inseparable in most households, organisations and cultures. (e) None of these 3 ) As opined by the writer of this article, although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organisations, mistakes fall into three broad categories. What are these categories? (a) Forgetable, preventable and intelligent (b) Superficial, preventable and complex (c) Precaution related, complexity related and intelligent (d) Preventive, complexity-related and intelligent (e) None of these 4 ) Why have so few organisations shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised? (a) Because every child does not learn at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. (b) Because failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most culture and every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. (c) Because culture is an important aspect of our life. (d) It is easy for executives to blame others and save their heads. (e) None of these 5 ) What in your opinion should be the most appropriate title of this passage? (a) Learning from Failures (b) Failures discourage an executive (c) Success is nothing but working hard (d) The Blame game (e) None of these Directions ( 6 -8): Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage 6 ) Exhort (a) urge (b) discourage (c) exclaim (d) exhume (e) expect 7 ) Jettison (a) regard (b) discard (c) forgive (d) collect (e) jumble 8) Dichotomy (a) separation (b) diagram (c) harmony (d) uniformity (e) diaeresis Directions (9- 1 0): Choose the word/group of words which is most opposite in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage. 9 ) Incontrovertible (a) indisputable (b) disputable (c) separable (d) convertible (e) dynamic 10 ) Overly (a) excessively (b) abundantly (c) overriding (d) meagrely (e) substantially
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Americans and Food An unusual but timely cartoon recently appeared in the local newspaper. The sin...The grizzled, tough-looking cartoon character ______.
A．warns Americans not to change their food habits
B．illustrates that Americans are changing their food habits
C．introduces new kinds of food to traditional American families
D．is employed by the government to illustrate Americans’ food habits
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