What does it mean to fail forward?

After learning that the 2022 International Women’s Day theme was #BreaktheBias, I wanted to do a bit of soul searching on what “break the bias” meant to me. It’s obvious the world is still filled with bias, deliberate and unconscious, which typically makes it more difficult for women to move ahead. What usually comes to mind for me is how others (males, other females, society in general) perpetuate bias and how important it is to challenge those views by having honest, two-way conversations about their origin and what we can do to evolve.

And while that is very much a big part of the solution, I also wanted to challenge my thinking by looking inward - what biases was I myself continuing to present to the world? And how can I challenge myself to break those biases and stop the cycle??

After some self-reflection, one of my long-standing biases that I continue to struggle with is the fear of failing. The need to be perfect. The thought stream typically goes like this:?

• If I don’t add the most ground-breaking, insightful, intelligent comment in the meeting, what is the point of saying anything at all??
• I put forth a solution to a problem and my team didn’t go with it. My solution was wrong. I’m supposed to be an expert at this topic. I am wrong. I am wrong for this team. Why am I even here if they don’t think my ideas are right?
• There’s this job that I’m interested in applying for. But I don’t think I’m qualified enough for it. What if I’m terrible at it? What if I let people down??

I can’t tell you how many times in my life these thoughts have flown into my brain and have changed my psyche, my actions, and my words. What is the opportunity cost of these thoughts on my career? How does this impact the example I am setting for other women on the team and how they then process their own thoughts, words, and actions?

I also know this fear of failing isn’t isolated to me alone. I have had this chat with a number of professional women who have this fear which perpetuates this bias for them and for the people they are an example to. So what can we do to #breakthebias and move forward?

One of my best friends forwarded me a fantastic TED talk from Reshma Saujani about how society teaches girls to be perfect, and boys to be brave. She states that we need to change our thinking and teach girls bravery, not perfection. This video had a lot of “aha” moments for me, both in terms of the biases that needed to be broken in broader society, but also the biases that needed to be broken within myself to be able to properly guide my daughter and the other women on my team on how to continue to move ahead in this world. How can I be brave and reframe failing??

We need to change our thinking and teach girls bravery, not perfection.

A couple of years ago, I got an incredible opportunity to take a role at Helcim. I was also lucky enough that the founder, Nic Beique, looked past all of my objections about why I’m not qualified for the job and why I was? wrong for the role, and hired me anyway.?

Helcim is a fast-growing Canadian scale-up on a mission to be the world’s most loved payments company. Working for a scale-up inherently means you will fail or get something wrong. A lot. Our industry is very competitive - there are a number of giant incumbents as well as market disruptors that we are going up against. We’re still figuring out what product will be a hit with our merchants, which marketing campaign will resonate with the world, which approach to coding a particular problem will in fact, solve said problem.?

At Helcim, we have adopted a phrase that has helped me and the team deal with failure. We want our team to fail forward. Because we are still evolving and growing, we don’t expect anyone senior or junior to have the “magic bullet”, the answer to all of our problems. But what we do expect, is that team members will roll up their sleeves and help us find those answers. Team members can do this by:

• Joining the conversation and giving their opinion. If we take that opinion but ultimately decide to proceed a different way, we want our team members to know that their view was woven into that decision and be proud of that. We also hope they take away the context in which that decision was made so that they can factor that into their opinion in the next discussion.
• Trying something, even if it won’t ultimately be the perfect, scalable solution. And learning and trying again when that something likely fails. When approaching a problem, we are open to a solution that’s a bit more manual at first or doesn’t cover all the edge cases. Getting something in place then allows us to get feedback about whether this solution is something we should put more effort and resources into. We really try to stress to our team members that this solution was part of the journey vs the final destination and we focus on the lessons gained for the next thing we try.

Failing forward means that being wrong or trying something without success is ok. In fact, it’s more than ok -? it is the only way that we can keep evolving and growing as a company. Leaning in with the team, learning from mistakes, getting gritty and pushing through to find the next potential answer is absolutely critical for Helcim to become the world’s most loved payments company, and for me to become the executive I know I can become in time.

"Failing forward means that being wrong or trying something without success is ok. In fact, it’s more than ok -? it is the only way that we can keep evolving and growing as a company."

So I’m going to try and incorporate this mindset into my everyday decisions to #breakthebias that sometimes holds me back. My hope is to set an example for other professional women around me so that what they observe and internalize is not a behavior about trying to be perfect, but instead being brave.

-Marj