From nearling to learning

From Nearling to Learning

When the anagram is not a coincidence

?Even though we rationally know that we learn more from our failures than from our successes, we still keep on focusing more on error and failure prevention, than actually on learnings through mistakes.

As we experience failure often as a strong negative emotion which we truly feel in our gut - “I’m never coming back from this” – and as the biggest reason why our confidence and self-esteem can take a hit, we might not want to try something new again.

?And although at its core, failure is defined as a lack of success and the inability to meet an expectation, failure has also been a proven prerequisite for success! But here’s the catch: failure only works to your advantage if you learn from your failures.

?Learnings from failure:

-??????Resilience: From failure, we learn resiliency. It’s hard to not learn how to build resilience after a failure, especially if you’re determined to overcome failure.

-??????Humility: Our egos are sensitive. They can grow and evolve into beasts of their own. And most of the time, a healthy dose of failure is good for our ego. It keeps us humble. Failure can teach us how to embody important characteristics, like humility in leadership.

-??????Flexibility: Failures teach us flexibility, adaptability, and how to overcome obstacles. It teaches us to use change to our advantage. It keeps us nimble and helps us adopt that growth mindset.

-??????Innovation & creativity: Edison didn’t land the lightbulb on the first, second, or even thousandth try. It took 10,000 tries to perfect the lightbulb. Innovation and creativity take time, iterations, and failures along the way.

-??????Motivation: Seeing progress along the way is a big motivator. Failure can help fuel our motivation and help us reach our goals.

?It’s clear that for true innovation and the implementation of a change- & growth-mindset we need failures. For true innovation it will always be better to start doing something and discover we’re on the wrong path (we learned what isn’t the right path) instead of doing nothing at all, as we then have zero chance of learning anything.

But as the words ‘failure’ and ‘mistake’ still keep that strong negative connotation, together with a group of friends & colleagues, we came up with something new.

Let me introduce a new word. A word that feels better. A concept that takes off that rather depressing feeling of failure: the nearling.

A nearling is a more positive word. It is the word for something new that was done with the right intentions, which has not (yet) led to the right result.

The reasons why nearlings don't succeed can be diverse: The circumstances have changed. A better option has been chosen. An error was made. Fate decided otherwise. Suddenly priorities altered...

That’s why, on a binary scale, the nearling is situated between zero and one, between failure and success. You can only recognize a nearling in retrospect.

But on the other hand you can be proud of nearlings, because:

·??????You started something and took initiative

·??????You may have moved others

·??????It may have led you to something that was successful

·??????You need many nearlings, for a few successes

·??????You learned from it

The nearling emphasizes that initiatives are almost always valuable, even if they don’t lead immediately to the desired result. They may be the result of an experiment gone awry, or of something unexpected, yet something has been learned from it.

You need nearlings to create learnings

We apply the ‘nearling’ principle already in different situations. Take the situation where a kid is learning to ride a bike. At a certain moment, there’s a good chance that the kid will fall. Have you ever seen a parent starting to scold their child when falling because it failed? Have you often seen the kid blaming the bike, the bumpy road, the strong wind coming from the East, … Well, actually they do sometimes. The parent usually re-assures the child that falling is part of the learning process and - with a kiss on the knee - the child jumps on the bike again and starts over. That’s the nearling spirit. You tried something with the best intentions, but the result was different than expected. Learn from it and start over. Wouldn’t it be great if we could apply the same energy in a business context?

From nearling to learning, the anagram is not a coincidence.

?How to Share Nearlings

Here’s a nice how-to guide to create a culture in your organization that allows for space to talk about nearlings and stimulate a more entrepreneurial mindset.

?-??????Gather in a special place designed for a weekly or monthly nearling ceremony.

Invite the people to stand up (one at a time), and confess a mistake or nearling in front of the crowd.

Let them answer the following 3 questions:

• What did you fail at?
• How did you cope with it?
• What would you do differently?

?Celebrate the mistake with a round of applause, or preferably with beer and champagne.

?Do’s:

Encourage the most senior leader in the room to admit his or her nearling to start with.

Make sure you create a truly safe environment. If at any time any sanctions are made, trust will vanish instantly.

Create a prize for the best nearling.

Don’ts:

No blaming and shaming.

Do not expect that everyone wants to share their biggest nearlings from the start. Normally, people find it very discomforting?to genuinely open up. Don’t force it, be patient and keep building trust.

If people repeat the same mistake over and over again, something is wrong. When this happens, it means they are not learning from previous mistakes.

?-??????Create a "Failed Ideas Hall of Fame"

In the same way many companies pay tribute to their most successful launches and achievements, this is your opportunity to create a similar one for product, marketing, sales and innovation failures. It sends a very strong and public message to all employees that failing is OK, and actually welcomed. You can even intersperse other epic failures from history to reinforce the message.

?-??????Change KPIs to Reward Risk and Failure

Most KPIs are tied exclusively to productivity, efficiency and boosting the bottom line. However, without incentivizing risk taking and without making allowances for the inevitable outcomes that comes with taking risks (failure), innovation will remain all talk and no action. To truly make trying new things part of the culture, employees must be measured by it. A simple way of doing this is to hold employees accountable for trying a new approach to one of their tasks each quarter.

?-??????Organize Fuckup Nights:

This is a global movement to share stories of business and professional

failure. It is powered by an event series in 250 cities of 80 countries. Since it began a few years ago, the initiators of the FuckUp Nights have started a research arm called ‘the Failure Institute’, to do research on all the cases shared at the Fuckup Nights to help decision makers make better decisions.

A growing number of governments are also supporting the mindset that failure doesn’t have to be bad. In Belgium, they have organized the Failing Forward Conference where people got a chance to share and learn from failure stories.

May we conclude that everyone experiences failure. And that oftentimes, it’s the fear of failure that stands in the way of our success. Failure has inherently come with the idea that it’s a bad thing. But in reality, the best failures are the best learners. Even more when we replace the word by a nearling?!

With the right mindset and permission to fail, we can learn valuable lessons. Our past failures are a part of the learning experience. And sometimes, it’s the major failures/nearlings that teach us the most.

~Try and Fail, but don’t Fail to Try ~