How do I fail?
I’ve been reflecting on this question and my relationship with failure as I prepare for a short talk and panel discussion on Failing Forward in Design. It’s the topic we’re exploring at the inaugural Melbourne Design Thinking meetup tomorrow night.
The reason we’re sharing our Failure Résumés is to normalise talking about failure, the lessons learnt, and to show that failure is part of growth on the path to success.
I’m finding it really hard. Not because I’ve got it all worked and have never failed but partly because of how I think about failure and identifying specific stories.
I don’t have a hero’s journey narrative or story arc to my life. I know that story archetype resonates and is what people expect but that’s not my relationship with the challenges I face.
My past 30+ years of corporate life and startups have been full of learning, failing, iterating, and adapting. And still are. My life is very much a work in progress.
How do I unpack my relationship with failure?
What is Failure?
Brace yourself for what might appear to be semantic gymnastics. And maybe it is.
Not all failures are equal. How and when we fail matter.
The challenge I’m having is actually the word failure. It’s so terminal. It’s also not the only version of how I fail.
As I’ve reflected on the nuance of what it means to fail, it felt like a pyramid. Right at the top of the pyramid is failure. The terminal end state that is only reached when you give up. But there’s more to the story.
Failing & Little F Fails
Starting at the bottom of the pyramid with failing. I have plenty of things in progress – experiments and things I’m trying that aren’t going how I hoped or are suboptimal. Some of them matter. Most of them don’t really. And some might work out yet!
Next is the smaller failed layer. The little f fails where things haven’t gone as I hoped and I’ve chosen to iterate away from them. But I’ve also learnt from them and there’s no real negative impact – the outcomes of safe to fail experiments.
Failed & Failure
Now we’re getting into the stuff that has more gravity. The big F fails are the major setbacks. Real adversity. Sometimes this is being blindsided by something I didn’t see coming. These are the ones that can really rock you.
But most of the time big F fails are when I haven’t managed a risk well – either not identifying the risk (which can lead to being blindsided) or I’ve underestimated it, not mitigated it well. Sometimes this is just poor execution.
Sometimes it’s just out of my control.
Failure only makes up a very small number of the things that haven’t gone as hoped. It’s a state that’s only really reached if I give up and stop. If I can persevere and keep going, it’s not a failure. It’s also important to know when to stop. Not my strength.
This is also where the identity level versions of it happen. Where we put the “failure” label on ourselves or accept it from others.
This is the dangerous version of failure. When it starts to change what we believe about ourselves. And becomes a self-talk script that undermines us, triggers us into a fixed mindset, and ultimately self-sabotage.
The reality is it’s almost always a journey from failing to failure. There’s time involved. Time to adjust and course correct. Time to grieve that this isn’t working out how I hoped.
This means that by the time of calling time and declaring something a failure, it’s actually a moment of relief. Closure. The ability to leave it behind and move on. And there are always things to learn and integrate.
I did a search through my book Solve Problems That Matter to see if there were more clues in how I framed failure in the context of designing, building, and launching ideas. I used the word fail* 41 times – of 82,000+ words.
Here are some other things it reminded me of…
Luck & Our Circle of Control
I find it helpful to remember my circle of control when thinking about failure. While I think there’s objective failures, I think most of failure is about expectations – and the gap between expectations and results.
There’s not much we actually control.
You can choose to see that as scary… or as extremely freeing.
When I wrote Solve Problems That Matter, I drew the theory of change logic model overlayed on the circles of influence (a version of this was popularised by Stephen Covey his The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) to frame the work we do and what we control.
Circle of Control
Our circle of control includes the things we can have a direct impact on. In life, our circle of control is relatively small – at least relative to all of the things we’re interested in. Our circle of control includes our mindset, thoughts, decisions, behaviours, and how we spend our time and energy.
Circle of Influence
Our circle of influence contains all of the things that we can directly influence, but that we can’t directly control. This includes the perceptions, feelings, and behaviours of other people, and the systems we operate within.
This is why I talk about doing things that help “create the conditions” for people to be happier. It’s why we “design for” great experiences and positive behaviour change. We can’t actually make someone else have the experience we want or design someone else’s behaviour. We can control these things for ourselves, and we can definitely choose to positively influence others though.
The quality of our outputs is within our circle of control, but how our outputs are perceived by others is within our circle of influence. Over time, we can expand our circle of influence. And we often have more influence than we realise.
Circle of Interest
Our circle of interest (or concern) is a wide range of things that we definitely can’t control and can only influence indirectly – or not at all. They’re part of our reality, and how we choose to respond is part of our circle of control. This includes the weather, traffic, natural disasters, world events, etc.
Unfortunately, it can be easy to fixate on these things, and they’re a common cause of stress and anxiety. That’s why it’s important to focus on our circles of control and influence – it helps us move into a more proactive space.
Luck
So most things are outside of our control and luck plays more of a role than we like to admit. It’s a fascinating area of research and simulations.
Scott Barry Kaufman said in his article The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized “…the data suggests that we miss out on a really important piece of the success picture if we only focus on personal characteristics in attempting to understand the determinants of success.”
Richard Wiseman findings present another perspective on luck “it’s something we create with our thoughts and behaviour”. He shares ways to increase our luck or what I often talk about as “increasing my surface area for luck”. I consider myself very lucky.
The core of this is our mindset and how we view risk and failure.
Risk, Failure & The Power of Yet
Our mindset, including the way we view risk and failure, is critical to our happiness, creativity, and success. Carol Dweck’s work shows us the power of our most basic beliefs – about the world, and especially about ourselves.
As she says in her book Mindset “in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from”.
She also talks about the power of “yet” in her great 2014 TED talk. She heard about a school where if they didn’t pass a course, the grade they received was “Not Yet”. This was a way to help students understand that they’re “on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future”.
Her research with students found those with a growth mindset performed better and had a very different perception of their experiences.
“Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.”
Carol Dweck
Our ideas about risk and effort come from our mindset. When we’re in a positive mindset, we realise the value of challenging ourselves, and we want to put in the effort to learn and grow.
Failure in Innovation
Innovation isn’t efficient.
It’s about taking calculated risks. It’s about failing and learning from things that don’t go as hoped to increase the likelihood the next thing will succeed – as long as we learn. Innovation means dealing with plenty of things that don’t go quite as we might hope… and requires perseverance and resilience.
You’re probably getting a picture of my relationship with failure… and that I’m not into it. I’m not, but I’m very much into learning. I always play to win – in a collaborative way and having fun while doing it.
When the phrase “fail fast” is used, it often leaves out the important part… “to succeed sooner”.
If it’s not going to work out, I want it to happen early, and before I’ve wandered down a path of overinvesting time, money, and energy in the wrong thing. And risk burning out in the attempt.
That means creating the conditions for success and taking the right approach.
Safe to Fail Experiments
Safe to fail experiments are key to testing our riskiest thinking at every step. The idea is to reduce the likelihood of overinvesting in solutions that no one wants, will use, or will pay for.
Running experiments requires time and often money. Some also have other risks involved, including reputational damage.
Safe to fail experiments are small scale, and don’t create damage when they don’t go as expected. Being mindful of the impact of our experiments is important in all contexts, but especially when dealing with social and environmental challenges. We need to be careful not to create unintended negative consequences.
Cut to the Chase… When Have You Fuct Up!
Ok, I needed to set up the framing to be able to answer this. When we’re talking about the failing and little f fail levels. All day every day. This is the version of failing I embrace and have a very high tolerance for.
If we’re talking big F fails. Still more than I’d like. My Failure Résumé is extensive.
Almost all of these had no negative impact on anyone else and it’s really the gap between what I hope, what I expect of myself, and the result – but most I reframe as not having succeeded yet. I’m still trying.
Proper failures. Plenty. And they carry weight.
If I keep them in perspective though, they’re a tiny fraction of all the things I try and am working on. Even things I class as a failure where I’ve given up on it and moved on haven’t been a complete failure – there’s always been good in them too.
30+ Years of Startups
The most straight forward examples of some of my failures is that over the past 30 years I’ve co-founded more than 20 startups – there are actually a few more ideas that died out before the point of having a name.
Only about six of these are still going in one form or another. That means well over 15 failed.
Last year I catalogued these in my Reflecting on 30 Years of My Startup Life post. This includes how and why each failed… and a deep dive on some of the key lessons I learnt, so I won’t duplicate them here.
You can also watch the recording of what we shared at the Melbourne Design Thinking meetup.
What I’ve Learnt
As I said… my past 30 years of startups have been full of learning, failing, iterating, and adapting. And still are. Here are some quick reflections on key things I’ve learnt – especially in a design and innovation context. Frame through a simple desirable, viable, and feasible lens.
Desirability
- You can’t solve business model issues with product features. This is the trap I’ve fallen into far too many times. Adding features and polishing the product, when the real issue is the value prop, or because the problem it just not a high enough priority for the target customer to do something about right now
- Thinking that because we care about the problem, everyone else does (or should) and that it’s a priority for them (even if they say so in design research)
- Not knowing (and testing) the riskiest assumptions and not guarding against confirmation bias – resulting in ignoring risk, ignoring research findings that don’t support our thinking, cherry picking data, structuring hypotheses and experiments that aren’t falsifiable… and basically post-rationalising anything that doesn’t fit. Invariably this results in tears sooner than later…
- Selling before you build and creating a repeatable sales process is the ideal approach. Get as close to it as possible
Viability
- It’s easy to let your startup and idea become all consuming. The excitement – and often a sense of urgency – means I’ve dived in and overinvested time and money without doing enough due diligence
- Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose. Time, energy, and money
- Know your numbers. What would monthly breakeven look like? What does net breakeven look like and is it likely it will ever be achieved?
Feasibility
- Designing and building for scale and reusability before product/market fit is dangerous and usually a lost investment
My Personal Ambition
One of the principles of action learning I love is that the people who choose to take responsibility in a challenging situation have the best chance of positively impacting and resolving the challenge. When you say yes and get involved, you give yourself the chance to get lucky. If you sit on the sidelines, you don’t.
Taking risks means having the courage to be vulnerable. To take on situations with “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure”, as Brené Brown says. I love her quote:
“No vulnerability, no creativity. No tolerance for failure, no innovation. It is that simple. If you’re not willing to fail, you can’t innovate.”
Brené Brown
My ambition is to keep learning by doing safe to fail experiments with curiosity and empathy… and to prototype like I’m right, and test like I’m wrong.
Let’s Collaborate
At Dynamic4, we specialise in regenerative leadership, design, and innovation with a focus on purpose and wellbeing. We do that by working alongside leaders and their teams to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter.
We love helping our clients design, build, and launch ideas that customers and teams love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet while increasing wellbeing.
This draws on my 30+ years of bringing together strategy, design, and tech to lead, design, and deliver strategic change in financial services, digital & tech, health & fitness, and building startups/social enterprises.
What do we actually do? Key ways we help is through coaching & advice, innovation sprints, and designing & delivering leadership, design thinking & innovation programs. My book Solve Problems That Matter is a good way to get started.
Keen to chat about how we can have fun collaborating to solve problems that matter? Book a free 15-minute discovery call.
