The end of failing

Failing has become a mantra for the startup and entrepreneur environment. Has filtered into established organisations. And increasingly figures in the business press and social media.

Failing is now a goal in itself.

Good companies have done it for 200+ years. Except they weren’t failing, they were continuously learning.

We need to move away from the negative residuals that comes from a culture of failing. Despite the positive intentions to free people from the fear of it.

Failure is a normal part of life. Fear of it should never deter us from actively looking for change, improvement or a better life. But it must be as a possible outcome from wanting to learn and experiment.

It is much healthier to experiment and learn. To play and try new methods, test ideas and prototype.

The outcomes are better – the spirit, language, residual and culture much more positive.

I am well aware that the intentions are good when people encourage failing. The aim is to encourage innovation and trying new bold ideas. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. But conversations with people living the culture. Shows negative side effects and sentiment surrounding it.

The residual

Every activity and experience leaves us with a feeling. It can be feeling full and satisfied after a great dinner, tired and proud after a 10k walk, stressed or inspired after a day at work.

These feelings accumulated over time. It becomes how we feel about the individual activities and how we feel about ourselves. It’s the residual feeling that sits with us over time.

In a culture focused on failing. Talking about failing, measuring how well and often we fail, we go home from work having failed – whether that be good or bad. The residual thought is ‘failing’, failure.

When we fail. We instinctively look for ways to explain it away, to cover for ourselves. We end up pointing fingers at the situation or others, to reduce the focus on our failures.

A healthier mindset is learning. Exploring options together, finding new alternatives, discovering new ideas. We can look at situations and activities and remember what we learned from them. Our residual is ‘learning’.

It may, hopefully, remind us of how much there is still to discover and learn. But where failing is a closed and finite mindset. learning is infinite and open.

Fear of failure

The recent failing trend. Hasn’t changed, that we in many other ways stigmatise failing. To the point it stifles progress and development. For decades people have been afraid of finger pointing and consequences to their careers. It creates a culture where most people are afraid to stand out.

People who, on paper are less educated, feel that even speaking about a topic, in a room with a well educated group is too intimidating. However narrow or unrelated their field of study is. Even they might very well know more, and have just as valuable contributions to the conversation.

Fear of failure is holding people back. It’s stopping them from learning. It’s stopping them from even looking for knowledge, that is readily and freely available to them.

Wanting to. is far more important than able to. That is the important culture we must spread. Inclusiveness must replace finger pointing.

Experiment, play, learn

Give people ownership and influence over their own work and accomplishment. Let them decide how to achieve the best results for themselves and their customers. Let them play around, try new methods, and actively support them with time and resources.

Experimentation leads to new discoveries. It generates ideas and possibilities you’d otherwise never have come across. It increases employee engagement – and attracts good people to your company.

The experiences we gain from it, adds to our list of “what we are not doing”. Not least the understanding of why we are “not doing” certain things or doing them in certain ways.

Same as when we were children. We have a hard time accepting the “because daddy says so” argument for not being allowed to do things. And we should.

If you don’t do it. If you’re not letting your employees experiment and learn. Somebody else will. Actually, your competition is doing it right now.

They are experimenting, testing scenarios, playing with different approaches, speaking with your customers. Learning everything they need, to stay relevant in the future.

A little method

Consider this before setting out – and keep it simple.

What do you wish to change or improve ?

What and who do you need to consider when experimenting ?

Why do you want to try something new ?

What do you need from others ?

Method and context

Change is complex, and is best done together with all the people involved in and impacted by the change. Using a simple framework to illustrate and clarify, will make it simpler to collaborate.

1. Which Outcome are you looking to change ?
2. What are the Cultures you should consider, including your personal culture ?
3. Which part of the Effort(s) involved in creating the outcome do you want to change or improve – and why?
4. What Input do you need from others – or your own work ?
5. What part of your Foundation supports the efforts involved ? How do you measure it, and make it part of a stronger foundation ?

Self evaluation

It is important to self evaluate, and making an extra effort to be objective.

Listening to and learning from others is important, but never at the cost of ignoring your own assessment. You are central to the change, how it feels, and the contribution to future goals. That may yet be too abstract for others to understand, or contribute to in detail.

Setting up the What and Why and How beforehand is especially important. Write it down, so not to allow time or sentiment, to distort the actual into perceived outcomes.

Be mindful, that especially when evaluating emotional or sensory experiences and results. You’re likely to colour the outcome – you are human !

Objective self evaluation is, naturally, important when making changes for yourself. Whether in your private life or professionally.

Having a broad and open view of the world, will help you develop a realistic sense of yourself in relation to others. A few good habits helps.

Stay spontaneous !

Don’t make a plan for every little thing in life.

It’ll put a damper on spontaneous living and spur of the moment experiences. As random as they may seem. It’s often where we find our clearest purpose and motive. the sun is shining – I want ice cream. Is no less important than reacting to a market trend or up-selling to a customer in a clothing store.

Nurturing our intuition, and keeping the playful child in us alive, is important.

If we do things with purpose. If we at least to some extend know Why we are doing something. Then we may not achieve the intended goal 100%, or it might turn out different. But at least we have an idea of why we spend the time and energy. Have a better chance of enjoying it, we’ll learn something, and maybe get a bit closer next time.

We want to enjoy a walk in the forest, so we put on our shoes and head out. But we didn’t check the weather forecast and get a dose of rain. That’s not failure – it just turned out different.

If you run a marketing campaign without considering the target audience. What actions you want the customers to take, or what idea you want to present to them. Then you have failed. You have no way to check or measure if you spend the money well, or the creative and copy worked as intended. But set out with purpose, and you may not reach the response rate, or get the intended outcomes. But at least you can measure and adjust.

Or even worse. You might get great results – but have no idea why.

We need to distinctively separate missing the mark from failure. Failure is doing without purpose and consideration, or doing nothing at all.

Setting out with; “I have no idea if this will work, it’s a brand new approach or others have tried and gotten nothing out of it”. Is perfectly ok, as long as you know how you’re going to measure how it worked.

Experimentation

You must allow for time to experiment as you work through any process, both creative and production. Like Toyota and others who adopted Kaizen.

Track and record learning

Experiments should be tracked, possibly even as a metric. Make it part of your story, and your team’s.

Follow ups and post mortem sessions, even 5 minutes. Can be extremely important to ensure employees are recognised for their effort. Learning can be made available and passed on. Failures transformed to learning.

The goal is not to experiment for the sake of experimenting. The goal is to strengthen ownership, customer engagement, learning and innovation.

Only way we fail

We fail if we do things without purpose – if we just do ‘stuff’ without considering what we aim to achieve. That’s when we’re at work.

Having fun, trying things out, testing ideas, spur of the moment. Those are all valid reasons to just do something. Playing is important, it’s our ‘discover new things’ tool from we were children.

It’s only a failure if you didn’t learn something from it.

Celebrate

Now celebrate that you did experiment, embrace what you’ve learned. Do it again and again and again, and in more areas of your life.

It will give you a massive boost in spatial awareness about yourself, your job, external people, customers and vendors. Yes, you should absolutely experiment together with your customers and vendors. The important word is ‘together’.

The more you experiment, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll do it faster and with less effort. It becomes a natural part of how you live and work.

Photo by Pragyan Bezbaruah