Failing Fast is Failing Successfully

Emerging technologies are bringing new opportunities for companies across all business sectors – from retail to banking to manufacturing. Whether it’s a legacy company looking to leverage its market position while reinventing itself for future growth or a newcomer looking to disrupt, each of these companies must do more than simply adopt and embrace these new technologies.?

They must also be willing to fail.?

I recognize that we’ve been programmed to fear failure. But in business, especially in the digital age, failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When embracing a growth mindset and treating a failed effort as a lesson learned or new insight, a failure simply becomes a valuable tool for getting it right the second time or third or fourth.?

The good news is that these same technologies - cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, 5G and others – are taking some of the risk out of failure by allowing companies to shift, replace, repair, or update their products in near real-time. This allows companies to get a far greater return on the investment made in innovation and accelerates the path to business reinvention.

Adaptation and Productive Failure

Speed matters and that’s where the failure factor comes in. When companies are able to recognize a problem and quickly adjust, the failure has less impact on the business. This is why companies with significantly fewer resources can disrupt markets and overtake market leaders. In the digital age, fast eats big and this is an important reminder to all organizations in all industries.

Consider, for example, the impact that technology has had on the insurance industry. Traditional insurance companies have evolved, some faster than others, to deliver convenience with online access to policies and efficiency with mobile claims management - Snapsheet is a great example of a company enabling this. Meanwhile, there are startups like Embroker leveraging technology to redefine the process of purchasing and managing insurance to make it a streamlined and a radically simpler experience.

Success in any industry means being comfortable with trying new things and failure is part of that process. But you can’t just fail for failure’s sake. Failure is a byproduct of continuous innovation and not an end product.

To steer teams toward productive failure, I use principle-based decision-making which helps ensure alignment on the underlying criteria and commitments that guide their work. It’s different from a project plan in that, instead of telling people exactly what to do, you set a direction and let them work out how to get there by using principally correct experimentation. By applying data-driven measurement to that methodology, we’re able to determine which projects are on the right track and shift resources to those showing the most promise.?

Through trial and error, we select the concepts, experiments, and ideas that will drive progress in our organizations.

Embrace uncertainty

I’m a planner — it’s in my DNA. I thrive in the details and like to understand exactly what we’re doing. However, my last two transformational jobs forced me out of that comfort zone. If you’re trying to have the answer to every question on substantial projects, you're moving too slow.?

During those jobs, I learned that you don’t always need a highly granular plan. Instead, I began to rely on guardrails. We prioritized ideas and guided our experimentation using checkpoint mechanisms.?

Within the confines of our productive failure, I grew as a person and leader. I allowed my team to run with ideas that weren’t fully baked because our experimental foundations were sound. By embracing uncertainty and not fearing failure we achieved our biggest breakthroughs and greatest success.