Since Finland celebrated recently its "failure day", I thought it would be a good idea to share a few thoughts on the topic of failing.
In plain and simple format: without failure there is no innovation.
It seems to be hard for people on all levels of the organization to get this point. Let’s start with the people who do the actual product. Often I am confronted with people’s fear and anxiety of failure. Where has it come from? Where are the times where one can joyfully explore the different ideas and if one thing does not work, you try another one and another one until the problem is solved and the customer is happy about the solution. Do I hear voices, that you need to work more? faster? more efficient? Surely if you can innovate more efficiently – it’s a clear advantage, typically it means to fail faster not less!
Getting it right the first time is what a manager might want …. surely that might work somewhere and it might be of outmost importance – think of tactical combat teams from the military. There – failure is not a vital option. Therefore those guys train a lot and train even more. In software development, products are complex and the journey is full of pitfalls. Therefore it is important to fail safely, it is important to have an environment in which failure is allowed – both from technical and management point of view.
What about management? Failure is not an option – I like Arnold’s movies and I thought it’s a cool sentence. However, I do think that such a statement should not be given by any responsible manager. Managers fail too! Here are some examples: managers fail to set-up the organization in alignment with the business goals. Managers fail to create an environment in which failure is accepted. Managers fail to create an environment in which people are motivated. Managers fail to achieve their business goals (BTW – who set those business goals to the managers in the first place?). So, managers fail in a lot of things. Sometimes the failures are more obvious and sometimes not and the consequences might vary from a nothing-at-all to a severe impact. Unfortunately, only a few managers admit their mistakes and seem to learn from them. Many are ashamed, blame others, justify the situation and outcomes. Good managers try out different things … constantly. They are never content with the status quo. Good managers experiment all the time at different levels. If the new solution works well it will stay, if it does not work well, it will be changed and something else is tried. And if a manager is not allowed to fail? Well, it’s the manager’s manager who should read this blog and ASAP.
Experiment: guess what number I choose in the range between 1..100? The fastest (I optimize for speed) way I can think of is to ask always from the half. Q: Is the number I guessed below (B) or above (A) X? A: X=50 -> (A); X=75 -> (B); X=63 -> (B); X=56 -> (B); 53 -> (A); X=55 รณ BINGO – I failed five (5) times in this journey.
Fail FAST. Fail OFTEN. Fail SAFELY.
NO FAILURE == NO INNOVATION.
