Fail Fast, Succeed Fast
But Don’t Fail Right Out of Business
There seems to be trends that grow and fade within the entrepreneur space that get picked up by media, and finally declared as novel new policy at larger companies. They come, they go, but become part of the tech sphere’s vernacular.
Some I find horrendously bad (like ‘disruption‘), or sour my tounge (like ‘grok’). But others provide good wisdom — when put into context.
Fail fast! Fail often!
The idea of “Fail Fast” has been bandied about for many years now, and by blindly adopting it, some companies have used it to fail right out of business.
The core idea of this concept is to make small, but brave changes to your product and see how the customer responds. Only a small amount of time is invested and if the result is an awful failure there has been little lost.
On the other hand, if the results look promising, you could iterate the idea into a successful product. Fail fast — but not for the sake of failing. Fail fast or succeed fast, either way, the idea is to take an idea and act on it.
A Culture that Allows Failure
Just take a look at Google’s research that Larry Kim summarized:
Did you see the section labeled Psychological Safety? The best teams at Google are ones who feel safe to make risks.
When a team feels that they are allowed to make mistakes, to fail, not only do they feel more empowered, but make leaps in innovation.
Risks that high intensity work cultures would devour like sharks.
Clearly a business would need to balance the reach of the risk, especially on revenue generating products. But something as simple as creating a sandbox of a production environment that include select, friendly customers would allow greater flexibility in risk taking.
Personally Fail Fast in Your Career
As an individual, the idea of fail fast is just as applicable to your career. By this, I mean that to grow within your own skill set and push any project forward, you need to take risks — risks that something may fail.
However, for performance review reasons, we may want to rephrase it as “pushing growth.”
Taking the risk of something failing is often the only way to move forward. Here are a few practical examples of risks you could take that would have big returns on your career.
Practical Example 1: Think of a legacy section of code or process that your company uses. Something that is so crusty (and yet works) that no one wants to touch it with an 83 ½-foot pole. Yet, that code continues to be a weak spot in the product and workflow — like a mild migraine that doesn’t go away.
What if you took a chance to slice off a small part of the crust and redesigning a feature to make it more robust? Or added a layer of API that could allow existing systems to continue to function as-is, but below could allow migration to a newer tool?
It may fail horribly (please don’t do this on a production environment), but you could also make big contributions. Even if it failed, your work just might spark interest in the leadership and empower you to continue.
Practical Example 2: Think about using the fail fast approach when meetings drone on about whether a feature could work (would blue be better than green). I’ve been in too many meetings where the same slides are presented on the pros and cons of a feature and the same arguments are rehashed.
Nothing ever gets done.
But what if you took a risk and threw something together that approximates the features and present it at the next meeting? It doesn’t need to be pretty or have all the product features. Just have one with a blue LED and another with green.
Even if it doesn’t work, your team may be impressed with your initiative (and thankful the meeting can finally end).
Quick and dirty demos can win out over well-prepared slides any day. Just be prepared for the reactions to range from ‘that idea is awful’ to ‘we are geniuses!’
Practical Example 3: I remember when I first started out, I was terrified of anyone in management. They seemed so impossibly imposing and unreachable. But then I had the chance to work 1-on-1 with some of the VPs.
And you know what? They were just humans trying to get their own job done.
Since then, I have had some incredible opportunities that were made possible by having a good relationship with these leaders.
So take a risk, and reach out to your VP, GM, or whatever title it may be. Reach out to some of the other leaders in your company. Find a mentor network to join.
Research how to be a “good” mentee, and maybe this risk gives your career a big boost.
Seeing is Believing
In the end, all of these risks, be it individual risks, or as a company, seeing and interacting with something is more ‘real’ than talking about it. It doesn’t have to be complete, it doesn’t need to pretty.
Spend just enough time to approximate the idea and allow for quick feedback.
Fail fast, but also succeed fast
The whole point here, and why this mantra has resonated with some successful businesses, is that having something, anything to show can be better than hand waving and slides. So take some initiative and build something risky. Don’t be afraid to fail (a little) and, most importantly: learn from it.
