When You Fail, Fail Fast

We often talk about winning in business: winning more market share, winning new accounts, winning with our customers.

“Winning” talk is energizing—and our successes are typically a much more exciting topic than our failures.

It’s not easy, or fun, to acknowledge professional defeat.

But failure and success often go hand in hand, and, frequently, the fastest way to get back on a winning track is to recognize what’s not working, cut it loose and try something new.

It’s also essential to note that failing isn’t synonymous with losing.

Calculated risk is a professional imperative, yet, sometimes, we find ourselves so fearful of the very notion of making a misstep that we become convinced we’ll face major repercussions if we fail—when in reality, failure is a routine part of everyday life.

Hank Aaron certainly understood that failure and success are hand in glove.

Hailed as one of the greatest baseball players in American history, “Hammerin’ Hank” retired from Major League Baseball nearly 50 years ago, and he still holds the league records for most career RBIs, extra-base hits and total bases.

But Hank Aaron also knew that not every turn at bat is a hit—and not every hit is a home run.

He understood that even the best teams in existence don’t win ’em all.

“Failure is a part of success. There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.” – Hank Aaron

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on the value of failing fast, and this Hank Aaron quotation about the relationship between failure and success really resonates with my thinking about smart business, and the importance of not being dictated by fear or throwing good money after bad.

Too often, we identify a problem in our organization—a broken process, a stalled-out project, a personnel issue or a bad investment—and we double (or even triple) down on it.

We pay consultants to tell us what we already know.

We bring in coaches to work with team members we should not retain.

We funnel in additional time, energy, funding and human capital in an effort to move a failing component from the L to the W column.

When our focus is solely on succeeding, we forget that cutting our losses sometimes is the “winning” strategy.

We forget that calculated risk is an anticipated cost of doing business.

And, we fall prey to the sunk-cost fallacy, even when walking away and starting fresh is clearly the best, most expedient route to our next great opportunity. We lose sight of the valuable lessons our failures can teach us along the way to better inform our decision-making down the road.

Try as we might, failure isn’t something we can avoid. Bad ideas happen. Good ideas fall through. New hires don’t always work.

Striking out is just another part of the game, after all.

Hank Aaron’s lifetime batting average is .305 (an extraordinary record, for any non-baseball fans), which means for every 1,000 trips to home plate, he averaged 305 hits—and more than twice as many strikeouts.?

The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is to reduce the amount of time we burn between identifying a failure and moving on from it.

Better still—the goal is to create a culture where associates aren’t afraid to fail fast and do so freely because they understand that leadership recognizes the value of thinking outside the box, trying new approaches and taking calculated, carefully evaluated risks.

We need our colleagues to do their homework, sure. But we also need to acknowledge that fear is the #1 enemy of innovation and fostering a work environment where individuals trust that when (not if, but when) ideas or processes fail, these failures will be met with curiosity and a QI mindset, rather than repercussions or retribution.

When a team of people feels safe taking calculated risks, suddenly there is no limit to a company’s productivity and growth potential.

At Focus Brands, for instance, we’ve been moving at lightning speed these past few years to adopt new technologies and build out our IT infrastructure.

Rapid-fire changes in the F&B industry have demanded this agility and a breakneck speed to market.

Thankfully, we’ve cultivated an atmosphere of innovation rooted in our simple willingness to try new things.

We’ve definitely made some missteps along the way, but we have also recovered quickly.

Our “secret sauce” hasn’t been getting it right the first time. It’s been our capacity to rapidly identify those elements that aren’t working, course correct and move forward.

In other words—we’re embracing our ability to fail fast.

We’re learning how to dust ourselves off with greater grace, leaning into the lessons we can take away from those decisions, hires and high hopes that didn’t go the way we thought they would.

Getting it wrong is never easy, and acknowledging a mistake is often twice as hard as making one.

But I’ve quickly come to realize that failing fast is integral to our lasting success—and understanding that feels like a winning strategy.

#failingfast #leadership #strategicgrowth #FocusBrands #transformation #OneFocusWay #lastingsuccess