Fail Fast, Learn From It, Move On
As you progress in your career you would probably like to think that trial and error is a thing of the past and certainly not a suitable method for moving a business forward - you would mostly be right with that assessment too, however the philosophy of using failure to succeed cannot be overlooked or underrated.
I have failed a lot! Professionally I can think of so many examples, from bad interviews to presentations falling on dear ears, trying to implement change too fast to not communicating my needs or expectations honestly. All of these experiences have given me an opportunity to learn and to avoid those mistakes in the future, or a the very least know how to handle them.
The greatest error people make is viewing failure as an endpoint as opposed to an extremely necessary part of the journey to success
At Dyson, for example, there’s a number that is significant: 5,127. That’s the number of prototypes it took took for Sir James to make the first bagless vacuum. That’s 5,126 failures or more saliently, 5,126 opportunities to stop. I love this example because it tells two stories. The first is the importance of tenacity, for sure it would have been easier to stop rather than to continue after each prototype, especially when under financial pressure. The second part is to always improve, to learn from what doesn't work and to keep that end goal in sight - from the Supply Chain side I of course jump immediately to Kaizen and Continuous Improvement theories - but ultimately to get to that end goal would not have been possible without identifying what didn’t work, i.e. what failed.
The title of this article is taken directly from a quote from a colleague of mine, Caitlin Werr, used in this video we participated in a couple of years ago, talking about our experiences within Supply Chain. That quote has been rattling around my head since the video came out, both for it’s eloquence and also for what a powerful message it is.
“By adopting the attitude of ‘fail fast, learn from it, and move on’ you are empowering your team, your people and your organization to fail in the best possible way, that is to continue being curious and seeking solutions.”
I described using failure to succeed as a philosophy, and as such it can be applied across many situations or fields. I spent well over a decade in hospitality management, having started in the industry as a 13 year old washing pots in a local hotel before over many years and careers working my way up to the senior management level. I cannot over advocate enough for everyone to have had some kind of service experience - not only do you learn the fundamentals of what drives a business, you also learn how to speak to people from every background, every socio-economic layer and importantly, that you cannot judge either of those things by first appearances. How do you learn this? Truthfully, the majority of that learning is by getting it wrong.
A question I ask anyone who has worked in alcohol service is if they remember the first time they refused to serve someone. It’s something that you can be trained on, read up on (google “how to refuse alcohol service” and you’ll find a wealth of information), you can even have experienced colleagues tell you what works for them. Ultimately, while theory is fantastic there’s nothing that can replace hard experience. Every person I’ve asked that question to has a story of when they have messed up this essential task, but also how they’ve avoided it again and how it shaped their future interactions.
Formalizing this thinking can manifest itself in different ways - the best being a workplace where your team are empowered with creativity and the understanding that to be truly pioneering failure is a normal and necessary milestone on that journey. It can also be as simple as a visual representation - back when I was working in a chain restaurant in Exeter, England I vividly recall a piece of A4 paper that was pinned to one of the 16th century beams - it simply had “If you f**k up, accept it, fix it” printed in big letters and evidently had been there for some time. It was the same message as my colleague Caitlin was advocating for just, if not in a slightly more earthy language. In a service based environment it is impossible and unreasonable to expect every interaction to be perfect - it doesn’t mean you’re not striving for it, it means that when mistakes or failures happen they are recognized because you can’t fix them or move on until you have accepted them for what they are.
I have done a lot of work with Early Careers, i.e. Interns, Grad Programs and Placements. I love working with these inspiring younger colleagues - inspiring because of how talented and driven they are and I know that they are already far more advanced on the path to success than I was at that same age. Whilst I’m always happy to offer subject matter advice, the area that I love seeing development in and supporting through is the translation of theory into experience. That experience involves challenges, obstacles and indeed failure, the role of leadership is to support through that and helping contextualize those events as part of a larger picture, offering perspective as a lens to see it as a part of the whole. That return us to the central theme of this piece, failure is not a destination but a stop on the way to success. When we become fixated on the failure rather than contextualizing it as a simple learning opportunity we are curtailing our ability to achieve long-term success and goal attainment.
Further Reading
There’s a fun organization - The Museum of Failure - that exists to highlight products that have failed. While it is relatively light-hearted look at products that weren’t commercially successful its core mission is to teach us that we need to accept failure and that without it there is no progress. Whether it is the ESPN Phone, Apple’s Newton MessagePad or the Google Glass - they are all examples of products that failed but ultimately were clear shapers of demand for the future or provided unexpected developments in their field.