Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home4/thepeo16/public_html/wp-content/plugins/osd-simple-table/osd_simple_table.php on line 17
Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home4/thepeo16/public_html/wp-content/plugins/osd-simple-table/osd_simple_table.php on line 17
Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home4/thepeo16/public_html/wp-content/plugins/osd-simple-table/osd_simple_table.php on line 17
How to Fail Successfully?
First of all, let’s get to the obvious point: If you have a choice, choose to succeed over failing. The intent of this article is not to convince you otherwise.
However, you should expect to fail every once in a while. This article touches on key points for how to fail successfully. If you never fail, then it probably means you should stretch your personal risk profile (or that you have a distorted view of the true definition of success).
If you avoid the possibility of failing because mistakes are a professional death sentence, then consider seeking another profession or another environment – but that’s a topic for another article.
Why Fail?
Although it’s a bit cliché, there is much truth in the notion that you can learn more from failing than succeeding. Failing simply stretches us more. It makes us get outside of our comfort zone and is often a situation that accelerates development by necessity. We find ourselves improving in areas like analyzing, decision making, conflict management, sensitive communications, and judgment.
Tips for Failing Successfully
By definition, when failing occurs, we experience the undesirable downside of taking risks. Every opportunity has a cost and potential risk association. Effectively managing that risk is a definitive factor in failing successfully.
Here are some important risk management-related tips for failing successfully:
- Fail small. Start with a trial run in order to minimize any potential risk. One of my favorite questions at the front-end of a risky move is ‘how can we pilot this?’. In general, we underutilize tools like prototypes, models, and pilots because of overconfidence, a need for speed, or a lack of imagination. Granted, some situations call for an all-or-nothing approach. But that’s not always the case.
- Fail objectively. Define success up front. Establish the measures of success and get buy-in from stakeholders. Identify the most likely conditions that could cause results to fall short of expectations and create transparency around them.
- Fail fast. Investment increases with time. The higher the investment, the greater the expectation for success. Even if you are in an environment that recognizes the benefits of failing, the expectation for learning and development ROI rises as more time passes. Most situations are not life and death. There is a cost for keeping projects on life support, so know when to pull the plug.
Tripwires
One concept that brings these tips together – tripwires – is discussed by Chip Heath and Dan Heath in their book Decisive. Tripwires are essentially if/then statements that assist with decisions of whether to take an alternative action.
They are important because they increase objectivity and reduce the emotion involved in critical decision making. Tripwires are an excellent tool to use in strategic planning or at the beginning of an initiative.
For each major risk or potentially negative outcome, tripwires define the condition that could emerge and the action that will be taken because of it. Here are a few examples:
- If revenue for our new product declines for two consecutive quarters, then we will discontinue production.
- If we get more than 20 complaints about the new web-only enrollment option, then we will develop a paper-based alternative.
- If projected enrollment rises to more than 4,000 students for three consecutive years, then we will initiate activities to build a new school.
Role of the Leader
Environments that allow for failing successfully will be more innovative. Ensuring that the culture includes innovation is the responsibility of the leader. In addition, the leader must ensure that failing which occurs throughout the organization also translates into learning throughout the organization. A more in-depth view of the leader’s role in failing successfully will be a separate article. There’s a lot to cover on that topic.
You may notice that not once did this article use the word ‘failure’. That’s a very harsh and almost always unfair label that is applied to projects, work, and even people.
It’s unfortunate that ‘failing’ and ‘failure’ are derivatives of the same word when failing is important to success. Thomas Edison may have said it best – “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. Thomas Edison – hardly a failure.
[…] great follow-up to this topic of purpose and planning is our recent post on Failing Successfully – because things don’t always turn out as planned – and in the end, we have […]
[…] How to Fail Successfully The Perils of Inaction Why Curiosity is So Important […]