Playing it Safe is Killing Your Brand: Why Failure and Wrong Ideas Are Your Best Friends
Why Being Risk-Averse is Killing Your Brand: The Importance of Embracing Failure and Wrong Ideas in Creative Development
As an owner of a creative agency, I can tell you that the fear of risk is killing creativity in too many companies. It’s not just stifling innovation, but also resulting in high turnover rates for CMOs. In fact, studies show that CMOs have the shortest average tenure of any executive position.
Why? Because too many companies are so risk-averse that they’re not allowing their brands to grow and reach their full potential. The hyperfocus on short-term metrics and quarterly reports is creating stagnant brands, while the rest of the C-suite wants transformations and lofty goals without taking any risks themselves.
It’s time to change that mindset.
Failure and wrong ideas can be your best friends in the creative development process. Don’t believe me? Just look at the success stories of some of the most prominent entrepreneurs in recent history.
Take the founders of Airbnb, for example. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia failed repeatedly before they hit it big. Their first company, AirBed & Breakfast, was a flop. They even resorted to selling Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s cereal to make ends meet. But they never gave up, and eventually, their persistence paid off with the creation of Airbnb, now a multi-billion dollar company.
Then there’s Jan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp. Koum grew up in poverty and struggled to make ends meet, but he didn’t let that stop him from pursuing his dreams. After a failed attempt at creating a desktop-based address book, he teamed up with co-founder Brian Acton to create WhatsApp. The rest is history, with the company being sold to Facebook for $19 billion.
Finally, there’s the story of Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify. After dropping out of college, Ek started a number of tech companies that failed to take off. But he didn’t let that discourage him. He continued to pursue his passion for music and eventually co-founded Spotify, now one of the largest music streaming services in the world.
The point is, failure is not the end of the road. It’s often just the beginning. Failure and wrong ideas can teach valuable lessons and lead to breakthroughs that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Embracing failure and taking risks can help you develop unconventional perspectives, experiment with new approaches, and foster a culture of learning and growth.
So don’t be afraid to break a few rules and try “wrong ideas.” Innovation requires going against the grain, considering the illogical, and occasionally being irrational. The best ideas are often the ones that seem so simple and obvious that you wonder why you didn’t think of them before.
But here’s the thing: creativity isn’t just about summoning genius ideas out of thin air. It’s about understanding that it’s a game of probability. Even the greatest creatives have terrible ideas that never see the light of day.
That’s why failure and wrong ideas are your best friends. They’re not wastes of time, but rather part of an iterative process that helps refine, experiment, and teach valuable lessons. By nature, radical and crazy ideas usually yield the most valuable insights.
The riskiest thing you could do is not take risks at all. As J.K. Rowling once said,
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.”
So stop being afraid to break a few rules and try “wrong ideas.” Creativity requires going against the grain, considering the illogical, and occasionally being irrational. The best ideas are often the ones that seem so simple and obvious that you wonder why you didn’t think of them before.
Of course, not every idea that walks through the door should be invested in. But it’s leadership’s job to build a culture that welcomes unbound, imaginative thinking and experimentation. If you want your brand to be successful, you have to allow your creative team to flex their creativity and cherish failures and wrong ideas. They’re often opportunities in disguise.
Here are 5 Reasons Why Embracing Failure will develop better outcomes
- Failure is a part of the creative process: Creativity and innovation often come from an iterative process that involves multiple failures and mistakes. Embracing failure as part of this process allows for experimentation, refinement, and learning valuable lessons that can lead to better outcomes.
- Risk-taking leads to valuable insights: Radical and crazy ideas usually yield more valuable lessons, and embracing risk-taking encourages people to consider the illogical, irrelevant, and irrational. This approach can lead to breakthrough ideas and innovative solutions that might not have been possible otherwise.
- Failure leads to unconventional perspectives: The best ideas are often simple and seem obvious in hindsight. However, they are also the hardest to uncover. Failure encourages people to adopt unconventional perspectives and challenge preconceptions and standardized practices, which can lead to new and better ideas.
- Failure leads to a culture of experimentation: A culture that values experimentation and embraces failure creates an environment where people feel free to go against the grain and consider new and unconventional approaches. This approach leads to more creativity and innovation and fosters a culture of learning and growth.
- Failure leads to better long-term brand development: Hyper-focusing on short-term metrics at the expense of crafting long-term brand developments often results in stagnant brands. Embracing failure and taking risks can lead to better long-term brand development by encouraging people to try new things and experiment with unconventional approaches. This approach can lead to breakthrough ideas and innovative solutions that drive long-term success.
In the end, playing it safe is killing your brand. Take risks, embrace failure, and let your creativity shine. Who knows, you may just be the next instant billionaire behind the next amazing startup.
