It’s never been a better time to fail at things. Failure is seen as a kinda cool thing to do. The legend goes that if you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough to be innovative. Failure is seen as an essential part of the innovative toolkit because of the learning experiences it affords you. By getting things wrong, it helps you to get things right.
Groups such as the UK innovation charity Nesta have even been running FailureFests, which are events designed to get people talking about their failures. Likewise, organisations such as DARPA have famously aimed for failure rates of 90% on their projects.
The theory goes that failure when done in the right way is great. If you’re failing in lots of small ways then it provides a lot of learning experiences to help you find things that do work. Except I’m not sure it really works like that.
A Harvard Business School study for instance found that when venture capitalists looked for which entrepreneurs to back, they overwhelmingly chose that had achieved success in the past.
Already-successful entrepreneurs were far more likely to succeed again: their success rate for later venture-backed companies was 34 percent. But entrepreneurs whose companies had been liquidated or gone bankrupt had almost the same follow-on success rate as the first-timers: 23 percent.
So those that had found success in the past, were much more likely to succeed again. Those that had failed by contrast were no more likely to succeed second time round than people who were trying things for the first time.
Now of course learning is a key component of any business, and indeed any project, but there’s a real danger here that we risk making failure acceptable. With that acceptance comes the possibility that we send a message to people saying that you don’t have to try to make your work the best it can be, because failure is ok. There’s an assumption that failed attempts are essential components on the road to success.
So the next time you start out on a project or build a new company, don’t have in the back of your mind this notion that failure is an ok safety net for you to fall back onto should things go wrong. Instead go into things with the mindset that you’ll make your best efforts to ensure it is a success.
It brings to mind the famous story of Hernan Cortes, the famous Spanish conquistador, who when he landed on the beaches of Mexico, hopelessly outnumbered against the vast Aztec army ordered his ships to be burnt so his men knew that failure was not an option. There was no plan B. No method of escape. Ok, I know there have been doubts cast over the veracity of that story, but it provides a nice contrast to the notion that failure is ok. Like Cortes, you should assume success, not failure, in whatever you set out to do.
Glad someone has written this. Always infuriated me how failure was accepted in the modern world, like the process of failing on its own is enough to make people learn. Making the same mistakes over and over is not gonna cut the mustard is it?
I think there are 2 entirely different discussions at play here.
1. Failing backward on an excuse.
2. Failing forward as an intentional decision.
The former is a cop-out. It speaks to the fact that a person never really gave their best. The latter is someone focused on making simple, intentional decisions over time that have excellence at the core.
Without clearly defining which conversation is taking place, this topic is a mindless carousel.
Failure does help people learn…but using it as a crutch to cover up apathy and wishful thinking after the fact is vastly different than it's counterpart…
An intentional decision before the fact to prepare with excellence, do all that we can to succeed, and that if things don't turn out well we learn from our failure and leverage it for our success we are committed to pursuing.
Bottom line…
It's a posture issue.
Fail forward.
Thanks for stopping by Brett. Your distinction is a good one, but even with the right intentions at the outset, unless you have some means of learning why you failed it still means you have no better chance of succeeding the second time round. As the Harvard study showed, there's no suggestion that people who fail are any more likely to succeed 2nd time round then someone trying for the 1st time. That suggests that something is broken somewhere doesn't it?
I'm glad Thomas Edison was alive before Harvard said failing once means you aren't likely to ever succeed. If we had to pinpoint something that is broken, I'd point at the Harvard study. It's vague. It's broad generalization of failure sensationalizes success. And what I mean by that is that without the advantages that come from iteration, trial and error…many of the great advances of our time simply wouldn't be part of our world. If Harvard is going to stand on something…I sure hope it's not that study. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. And lastly…I want to clarify. It's not about having the best of intentions…aka right intentions. Best of intentions means to do something. It's about intentionality. That gets it done. And if it doesn't turn out the way we thought…following it with more intentionality to draw conclusions, measure, iterate, and get right back up again to learn from it. That isn't failure. That's progress.
Great post Adi.
I think it's important we walk the thin grey line between failure and success and how they influence/determine our outcomes. When 'failure is not an option' we often stand the risk of being pigheaded and not cutting our losses while we can.
Hypothetically, are you saying it's OK to let a startup continue to burn cash because I have a 'deep conviction' that failure is not an option and success is certain in the end?
I also think it's a cop-out if we quit too early in the face of challenges and rejection that could be overcome with some patience and drive for success.
My point is: choose your failures smartly and carefully. Hernan Cortes must have known he stood a good chance against the Aztecs if only his men were inspired enough. Burning his ships did the trick!
Cheers.
Hi John-Paul. As you say, it's striking the balance between giving it your very best shot but also having the insight to know when you're flogging a dead horse. Seth Godin would say getting through the 'dip'.
Failure is fine so long as people learn lessons and go into the task with every intention to succeed.