If At First You Don’t Succeed, Don’t Be Afraid To Fail Again

This is the first article in a four-part series in which I explore core components of Growth Marketing. 

Growth Mindset Definition 

The Growth Mindset is a popular psychological theory right now however, based on conversations I’ve had, it means different things to different people. So for the sake of clarity, I am going to begin with this definition:

intelligence can be developed rather than being set in stone

The concept comes from Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck who observed that children who were praised for their intelligence were more likely to choose future tasks that they thought would make them look more intelligent. In contrast, children who had been praised for their effort tended to choose tasks that would help them learn new things. You can read more about the study here.

Business Application

My introduction to the Growth Mindset was in the room of budding Virgins, Sir Richard Branson and critically acclaimed author on the science of high performance, Matthew Syed, at Virgin Management HQ in London.

The conversation centred around Matthew’s latest book, Black Box Thinking, in which he explains how success happens and how we cannot grow unless we are prepared to learn from our mistakes.

He tells the story of two industries with contrasting attitudes to failure, air travel and medicine. After an air accident everyone involved shares warts and all and steps are taken to ensure the same things doesn't happen again (here's an example from Flybe yesterday). In the medical profession things are a little different. According to YouGov, one in six Brits know of someone whose poor treatment by the NHS has been covered up...

And the long and short of all this: today it is estimated that there's 150 avoidable deaths in UK hospitals every week, more than two times the number of air travel fatalities last year worldwide.

Learning Culture

What’s exciting here is the medicine/air travel analogy above is far from an anomaly. There are examples throughout history of people, organisations and industries learning from their mistakes and winning.

If you haven’t failed, you’re not trying hard enough - Jennifer Crusie

The reason Sir Richard Branson was present for the Black Box talk I mentioned above, was to discuss his dyslexia. According to Syed, Richard had learnt how to manage failure from a young age and that was a key ingredient for his business brilliance. 

There are plenty of examples of teams benefitting too. A recent example would be Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes F1. Team boss Toto Wolff attributes learnings in the first half of this year’s championship to their dominance in the second, despite stiff competition.

Implementation

Unfortunately, substituting the word “failure” for “learning” simply won’t cut it. But fear not, it is something that can be taught.

For the Growth Mindset to have impact in an organisation, it needs to be embedded into the culture and underpinned by skills and knowledge so people understand the ‘why’. And if you’re serious about it, why not celebrate it? When we have 10 failures at Growth Tribe, we have a party. 

My final thoughts, before we all get too carried away, please do not misinterpret the Growth Mindset as “anyone can do anything” or merge the boundaries between failure and fuck-ups. Yes, it helps you develop as a person and grow your business but, unfortunately, nothing turns water into wine.

If you’d like to hear about how we can implement the growth mindset in your organisation drop me an email [email protected]

Thanks for reading.