Are you failing enough? By Kevin, Penn Hill
We all have an inherent aversion to/fear of failure. Some of this is about how we might be perceived by others: The word ‘failure’ can sound alarmingly close to mis-management, poor judgement, even incompetence. And some of this aversion reflects our own internal conscience: We're all operating with finite resources, either for ourselves or acting on the trust of others, and so when something we do falls over, we have to recognise that we have lost/wasted those resources for no results. Too many of these and your career, your business, your relationships, will start to feel it. So it makes perfect sense, with our mixture of pride, conscientiousness and frugality, we want to be associated with success. In fact it further makes sense that, to avoid all these negative attributes, the best thing to do is follow tested and proven techniques, err your decisioning on the side of caution, and avoid risktaking behaviour altogether. And you’ll already be guessing where I’m going with this, ‘cos mankind’s most amazing achievements and biggest discoveries came from doing the exact opposite: experimenting, innovating, taking a risk and stepping into the unknown. If we avoid any risk of failure we’ll never be the 12 THEASHLEYCROSSLINK
ones to stand out and lead movements and be known for our passion and innovation. It needs a compromise. Something pragmatic, founded on encouraging experimentation, and managing/anticipating/ allowing for fallout. Think about: - Creating a culture where you recognise and reward initiative and innovation. And more importantly, don’t punish failure… well, so long as the logic behind the decisions is sound, and it’s been executed well. Take a lead from one of my management thinking heroes Tom Peters who calls us to “reward excellent failure, and punish mediocre success”. By the way, the larger your organisation becomes, the nearer impossible this is to achieve. - Mitigating the potential impact of failures by having a mixed portfolio of safe bets and more ‘risky’ strategies, so that you’re never betting everything on a single outcome. Also, never bet everything on a single outcome.
- Testing your hypotheses where possible with a smaller sub group, and always being open with those involved that this is just a test and may not proceed into a full launch. - Ringfencing the experiment. What are the variables? Who might be affected? Which elements can you control, to help contain the explosion? Hint: it won't be all of them. - Finally... planning, observing, measuring, and learning, to extract the most value from your experiments, even (especially) your failures. However, ultimately, you also need to recognise that our environment is just too complex to model and control every single variable and potential outcome. Sometimes you just have to put it out there, releasing new energy and ideas into the world, and seeing what happens. How about it?
Kevin
Kevin Sheldrake is founder of The Boardroom’s Business Owner Boards – “A healthy mix of support, community, innovation and rebellion!” - Join us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ TheBoardroomUK