How can local governments ‘fail forward’? We’re not sure, but we’re working on it.

This article was co-authored by Josh Sorin and Andi Mirviss.

At CPI our mission is to reimagine government so that it works better for everyone. As recently explored by my colleague Danny Buerkli, what we think that means to us is accelerating a movement that’s percolating in governments across the world — a movement towards a government that is more devolved, human, accountable, self-improving, and open to experimentation and continuous learning.

Over the last few years, our team at CPI has been fortunate to work with public problem solvers in over fifty cities as they apply their passion and creativity to identify solutions to pressing urban challenges. From redesigning public transportation in Sioux Falls, SD to removing barriers to securing affordable, safe, and stable housing in St. Paul, MN, go to any city and you will find local leaders working with residents and businesses to design, test, and pilot innovative solutions that improve the communities they serve.

From these experiences, we’ve seen firsthand how equipping public problem solvers with the right innovation methods, tools, and technology can drive a deep impact toward solving critical problems. But, we’ve also seen that without an internal culture that supports innovation, it’s difficult for change to “stick.” We believe that the most important factor in creating and maintaining successful cultures of innovation is if the team, department, and organization are comfortable with the ebbs and flows of progress and, more specifically, their posture towards failure. Does the team have a culture that views failure as an end state or as a necessary building block to success? Regardless of where each team’s change efforts sits on the innovation spectrum, from run-of-the-mill process improvement to engaging in moonshot experiments, it’s become clear that a government team’s ability to fail forward (defined as identifying, analyzing, and taking action on failures) is at the root of innovation.

But how do teams create cultures of innovation that embrace failing forward? Well, as we stated in our first piece on ‘failure’, we’re not sure. Learning from failure is hard. Learning from failure in the public sector is even harder. And when it comes to innovation and change, understanding the local context is critical.

So, back in October, we partnered with the Aspen Institute’s Center for Urban Innovation to launch the Fail Forward program, a six-month impact-oriented research initiative that aims to both understand how local governments can fail forward while also catalyzing cultures of innovation through in-person workshops. Since then we’ve been quite busy, we have:

• Launched the Fail Forward website where we will post all of our content and updates throughout this project;
• Completed an initial literature review and published a ‘think piece’ on failing forward;
• Interviewed 20 ‘failure’ experts across the country, including Chief Innovation Officers, academic experts, and other private and social sector innovators; and,
• Established strategic partnerships with ELGL and The Atlas to amplify our findings and connect local government practitioners across the country.

But, what we’re most excited about is the work we’re doing on the ground with local governments across the country. Recently, we’ve conducted ‘Failure Foundries’ in Washington, DC; Kansas City, MO; Little Rock, AR; Seattle, WA; and King County, WA. In these day-long workshops, participants identify the unique barriers to learning from failure in their organization and develop action plans to overcome them, which the team is responsible for implementing.

Over the next month and a half, we will be conducting failure foundries with two more local governments, bringing our total to seven, including 22 departments/agencies. The full cohort of local governments includes Washington, DC; Kansas City, MO; Little Rock, AR; Philadelphia, PA; Dallas, TX; Seattle, WA; King County, WA.

The ultimate goal of the Fail Forward program is to bring ‘failure’ out of the shadows and to inspire local governments to create cultures of innovation that embrace failing forward. As such, we want to get as many people across the country as involved as possible

So, how can you participate?

Share your failure! Take our quick survey where we ask you to share a time that you and/or your team has failed and what you learned from it.

Have you taken steps in your organization to create a culture of innovation that embraces failing forward? Set up an account on The Atlas and post a project detailing the steps you took and the lessons you learned. Follow these quick and easy instructions:

• Create an account here (it just takes a minute)
• Click ‘Add Project’
• In the ‘IN COLLABORATION WITH’ box, select ‘CPI and Aspen’s Fail Forward’
• Fill out your project details and make sure to include how you failed forward in the ‘Lessons Learned’ section

Bookmark the Fail Forward website where we will be posting updates on our work over the course of the next few months.

Follow us on Twitter to stay apprised of the latest updates: @CPI_Foundation, @AspenUrbanInnov, @Josh_Sorin, @TheAtlas4Cities and @ELGL50

Let us know if you are a philanthropic organization interested in partnering with us. We are interested in collaborating with partners who can help us scale this work to other local governments across the US. Please get in touch if you are interested in supporting our work: josh@centreforpublicimpact.org