What I learned from just one failure
Lucy Gower
Helping industry-leading employers committed to social impact, nurturing leaders, & retaining talent. | facilitator | speaker | trainer | coach | podcast host
Early on in my career I was working for a small charity as a trusts and foundations fundraiser. But I really wanted to be an events fundraiser.
When I was little, I LOVED watching a programme called?‘Now Get Out of That.’?It was an early version of reality television. It followed two teams as they went through a series of obstacles themed around a top-secret mission.
Each secret mission was designed to challenge a team’s critical thinking, problem solving and physical abilities.
I loved it so much.
I thought it would be a great idea for a charity fundraising event. I honestly can’t remember how it came about but somehow I met the designer of the?‘Now Get Out of That’?challenges and pitched the idea of working on a charity fundraising event to him. He said yes!
I persuaded my manager that this was a good idea. They reluctantly said yes, so I got busy planning, writing emails and negotiating with the printers for some discounted leaflets.
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When we launched no one signed up. It was a failure.
I learned a lot.
Learning from failure is an important innovation skill. ?Building a team environment where testing and learning is encouraged and where people feel safe to try out new ideas and concepts helps the whole team to develop and move forward.
If you’d like to delve deeper into learning from failure, join us on Thursday 3 March from 6pm-8pm for an online networking event on how we learn more from failure than success. Hear from our guest speakers and get to mingle with other participants.?Here’s your link to sign up. ?Tickets are just ￡15.
Helping overwhelmed and exhausted not 9to5ers fall back in love with life and work, prioritise themselves, and do life without the burnout. Let's work together so you can do this!
2 年I particularly like this tip: "Testing something by telling people about the event and asking interested people to join a waiting list to gauge real interest can be a low risk way of testing an idea." I was pondering why we don't do that more often. I think there's the fear of failure again. What if nobody's interested? But also: what if not enough people are interested? What if we let them down. Any tips on how to explain there wasn't enough interest in something, in a way that keeps people still engaged with you?
Enterprise Manager for Countryside Services at Derbyshire County Council
2 年Yes Lucy and the natural tendency to sweep our failures under the carpet also stops others from being able to see and learn from our failures.
Senior Partnerships Manager at Nordoff and Robbins Music Therapy
2 年This really resonates with me Lucy! Particularly the reminder that our ideas and comms need to be suited to our audience. I've definitely wanted to sweep failures under the carpet in the past but learning from them is hugely beneficial and can even lead to a huge success! Thanks for sharing this.