"We need to fail fast"

In my experience, it is usually something said in meetings, or board rooms, where someone have been inspired by (or hopefully even read) “The lean startup” by @Eric Ries which is a great, and still relevant, book. 

However, many people don't seem to understand the point. What is important is to learn quickly, especially when you are still in search for the business model and not only executing an existing one (which large companies usually does). And yes, that for sure involves a lot of failing but also many moments of celebration. At M, we think about it as time to knowledge.

So the next time you hear someone saying “we need to fail fast”, remember what really matters is that you create psychological safety in your team to share learnings (and failures) together with short customer feedback loops so that you can quickly act upon what you’ve learnt. Only with that in place there are true value in failing (or why don't we just call it learning).