how organizations should learn to fail
the cost of not failing is your organization's long-term success
"Fail forward."
How many times have you rolled your eyes at this in your company all-hands meeting?
"Yeah, but if I fail, that'll mean I won't get my promotion."
“What if layoffs are around the corner? If I hit my targets I won’t be laid off…”
Many organizations preach failure but don’t practice it. The incentives, climate, and implicit vibes are all telling employees to play it safe. They need their paycheck!
But think about this.
What is the cost of not failing?
Businesses that don't fail, don't learn. And if they don't learn, they don't adapt to the market, which is a surefire path to obsolescence.
Failing is inherent in climbing
I just did one of the hardest rock climbs of my life after failing on it 19 times. 19 times. This is 19 days of driving to the crag, hiking, trying the route three times, failling, leaving, and driving back. That’s a lot of effort!
Many people will look at this and ask: so you’re just trying one route and failing at it every time? Yes! Us climbers find joy in this process. We are learning and getting better every single time.
For professional climbers, they’ll attempt their route 20-40 times, year-after-year, season after season until they finally finish their route. Failure is the path toward success in climbing. And the rate of failure for pro climbers is higher than in other sports:
A pro 3-point shooter in basketball makes 40 of their 100 3-point shots.
A pro hitter in baseball can hit 29 out of 100 bats.
A pro tennis player can win 70 of their 100 first-serve points.
A pro climber can fail on their project 100 times, as long as they send once.
Dave Macleod talks about how many adult climbers don’t fail because society teaches them not to:
In my opinion there is much confusion about the place and role of failure in western society that has spilled over into sport with poor consequences for its participants. It has become an increasing norm that failure generally is bad, unacceptable and even punishable. If governments fail to meet targets, they are booted out. If football managers fail to win the league, they are sacked. Make a professional error, and your ass is getting sued etc. Watch a TV show like 'The Apprentice' and you see reams of smart folk keeping a straight face while they announce that they simply don't accept personal failure. But there is a fairly simple detail missed out here. It's fine to settle for nothing less than personal success in the long run. But temporary failure is the essential part of long term success. That bit gets dropped off in the edit. It wouldn’t make good TV or a good headline sound-bite.
Like many adult climbers, we also don’t fail at work…
Aversion to Failure in Business
Companies are averse to failure, too. Reputations are at risk. Job security is on the line. “The market isn’t looking good.”
While many companies need to prioritize keeping their business, playing it safe is also a risk. The cost of not failing? Your business not achieving their long-term goals. The best organizations fail, learn, and adapt; the ones that don’t go out of business.
Just like in climbing, organizations need to fail (and learn from it) to achieve long-term success. And if organizations fail safely — if they make it “inexensive to learn” — they learn more quickly. So how do organizations fail in a way that minimizes cost and maximizes learning?
Fostering ways to fail
Frame your projects as bets. More on this here: TBM 19/52: A Portfolio of Bets
Use decision-making frameworks — like Integrative Decision Making — that push teams to make decisions that are safe-to-fail. (You'll learn from it anyway.)
Disagree and commit. Encourage dissenting opinions, but once the decision has been made, implement the decision. Do not reopen the decision.
Celebrate teams that try something new that didn't work. This will make it safe for more teams to innovate.
Share failures publicly. Companies are often afraid of doing this because it’ll hurt their brand perception. But what hurts your brand perception even more is when people find out about failures not through your company, but through industry gossip/heresay/exposition articles. Own your failures! People will appreciate your honesty, and be bought into your brand even more.
These five things are much more impactful than just saying "move fast and break things."
What ways do you build failure (and learning) into your organizational culture?