It’s Okay to Fail.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in life is that it’s okay to fail. This was hard for me because I had always associated failure with disappointing others, not living up to the expectations that I set for myself, and because I had an ego that I couldn’t let go of. It took a very frank conversation from a mentor, quite a bit of self reflection, and personal growth to finally realize that failure is okay.
I fail on a daily basis, but ever since I accepted and embraced it, I’ve found that I’m learning and growing so much more than I have in the past. Everyone fails, but putting yourself in a position to learn from failure by trying out an idea that may or may not work, or asking a “dumb question” will benefit you and your organization(s) immensely more than if you didn’t. You’ll discover new approaches, new ways of thinking, and will come up with better solutions as a result.
This doesn’t mean go out and fail at everything you do on purpose. You still need to put your best effort forward, think critically, and try everything you can to do a great job. You just need to embrace the mindset that you can fail and focus on learning as much as possible from your failures when they happen! When you’re comfortable with being able to fail, you put yourself in a great position to grow because you won’t be afraid to ask questions and you’ll try things that you were afraid to do in the past.
Learning and growth
Failure is an inherent part of organizational growth and should be embraced and learned from rather than frowned upon. You will learn more from trying something out and failing than if you didn’t.
Mark Zuckerberg says it best with his philosophy of “move fast and break things”. This was the mantra at Facebook that helped set a culture that accelerated growth early in the company’s life. Breaking things generally has a bad connotation because no one likes having their things broken. But, the benefit from what Zuck and his employees would learn from when things would break greatly outweighed the cost of the break. As a result, Facebook employees weren’t afraid to try out their ideas because there wasn’t ramification when what they tried didn’t work. They’d simply figure out why it didn’t work, learn from it, and try out another idea.
This culture and mindset enabled the company to innovate at a rate that simply could not be matched and turned Facebook into the giant it is today. When you hire a bunch of smart people and make it a part of the culture to experiment with ideas, even if they end up not working out, good things are going to happen long-term.
Note — now that Facebook is a huge company, Zuck has revised “move fast and break things” to “move fast with stable infrastructure”. The new motto isn’t quite as catchy, but still embraces experimentation, failure, and learning, as long as you don’t break anything critical!
Embracing and accepting failure
I’ve found that willingness to embrace and learn from failure is driven by two main factors: ego and culture. If a person has a huge ego, like I once did, they will not easily embrace failure because being wrong hurts their pride and they view it as a point of weakness. Conversely, if a company has a culture that doesn’t tolerate failure, then employees will be afraid of failure regardless of how big their ego is, and will stick to what has always worked, ultimately stifling innovation.
A company’s culture can change one’s ego to become comfortable with failure, but it’s hard for one person to change the culture of a company, unless they’re the head of it. It’s up to the management of the company to set the tone for the culture and make it okay to experiment, fail, and learn from failure.
The sum of failure leads to innovation.
Get out there and fail!
Get out and experiment with your ideas! But, don’t do anything just for the sake of doing it or get reckless with your approach. Think critically about how your idea could solve a problem, ask a ton of questions, test your hypotheses, and don’t be afraid of being wrong. If you are wrong, analyze why and learn as much as possible from it!
I promise that if you open yourself up to being able to fail, you’ll begin to learn so much more and will experience an immense amount of growth both personally and professionally.
