How Tsai CITY Taught Me to Honor Failure
Since joining Tsai CITY in August 2019, Zoe Hunter has led programs like our Accelerator and Innovator’s Toolkit series, mentored student innovators, and helped Tsai CITY continue to evaluate and iterate on our work — so it’s only fitting that she’s recently been promoted to Director of Student Programming. Reflecting on her time at Tsai CITY so far, Zoe says that getting comfortable with failure has been a key lesson. With a recent article as a jumping-off point, we asked Zoe to share what she’s learned about honoring failure — and building structures that support that — at Tsai CITY.
I wrote in xoNecole and Thrive Global recently:
Growing up, I was taught that I have to be twice as good to get half of what others have. This was the beginning of my perfectionism.
This saying, which often permeates the walls of black homes, taught me two things: 1. I need to work extra hard, and 2. I cannot mess up. A microscope was on me, as a black woman, to do things right and to do things well.
This became evident in all my professional roles. I felt that goals must be met, process must be followed, and vision must be executed seamlessly.
Failure was unacceptable. I couldn’t give anyone a reason to doubt my ability. I had to execute everything perfectly. While I tried my best to uphold such strict expectations, it became an unavoidably heavy burden to bear. But, as I describe in the article, I encountered an unexpected question when I interviewed for a new role at Tsai CITY:
During my final interview [with Tsai CITY] I was asked my thoughts on failure. Considering what I mentioned above, I responded honestly, “While I think it’s necessary, I’ve never been allowed the space to fail in the workplace.” The interviewer immediately shot back, “At this department, we honor failure. We want our team to fail so they can find a new solution. We want them to fail so they can learn something they never knew. And most importantly, we want our team to be okay with failure.”
Did this mean they had low expectations? No. It simply meant that they cared more about growth than they did about perfection.
I was excited about the possibility of working at a place that honored failure, but I didn’t realize how challenging it would be to release the strongholds of perfectionism and the fear of failure — even at a place that welcomed it.
Failure isn’t all bad, and I’m learning that each day. But allowing myself to do it in a workplace was going to take more than just my own willingness to do so. It was going to take an institution actually committed to honoring failure and all that it comes with. A department that recognizes what it means to allow people to fail and can shift gears if/when that does happen.
So how could I be sure that Tsai CITY was ready to do that?
There were many signs, really — for both students and staff. During my interview it became clear that failure was a beautiful journey when a majority of the staff noted that one of their favorite events was Fail Night. The event itself was meant to honor people’s processes by highlighting the lessons learned from failure, but also to encourage people to fail in the moment through a series of improv activities. Participants were encouraged to let go of the need to strive for perfection and to simply allow life to happen. It put into practice the very art of failing and created space for the experiences that came from it.
In my work with accelerator teams — and the conversations I’ve had with leadership leading up to it—I realized that Tsai CITY doesn’t view success as the number of teams that continue their venture after the accelerator, or look only at common metrics like money raised or headlines garnered. Rather, the program’s success is based largely on the successes the teams identify themselves. The accelerator is an experiential learning process, one that yields varying outcomes. We don’t pigeonhole any student team to a metric of our standards — that wouldn’t be fair. Instead, we allow the teams to set their own definitions of success and we support them in reaching that. If a team decides to exit their venture, that’s their decision. We give each and every team the opportunity to decide what’s best for them. And them moving forward in whatever way they deem necessary is our idea of successfully accelerating.
Tsai CITY does the same for staff. Success is what we define it to be. When proposing new programs or thinking about events, I’m prompted to answer the question, “What will success look like?” In fact, it’s written on the whiteboard in my office and on a post-it note near my computer. I’m constantly encouraged to set a metric of success for my own portfolio and to lean fully into that. This has been critical for how I approach my work.
Even as a collective, we honor each other’s failures through a staff meeting practice called Rose and Thorn. Rose and Thorn provides us space to highlight the good moments (“roses”) and the not-so-good moments (“thorns”) of our past week. Sharing the not-so-good, from a poorly attended event to that conversation we wish we could redo, opens conversations that center personal mistakes, introspective feedback, and moments of hyper-awareness. What it doesn’t include: judgement, chastisement, and condemnation.
And on a smaller scale, being able to speak with leadership about personal shortcomings has cemented the comfort I feel for failing in this space.
Tsai CITY not only talks the talk, but we walk the walk. When we speak to wanting failure to happen, we’re also provided the space for it to happen. “It can be messy until it’s not,” was a sentiment shared with me during a meeting with our managing director, Ony Obiocha, after expressing concerns about a few drastic changes I proposed to a core program. Not only was his support critical to my comfort executing those changes, his willingness to honor the process toward getting it right was catalytic. The thought that, when trying new things, it can be imperfect until it isn’t anymore has given me the creative freedom to think big and stop playing it safe.
The opportunities presented here have shifted the way I look at failure, innovation, and workplace culture — and because of it, it’s allowed me the freedom to iterate, enhance, and become. I’m able to step out of my own comfort zone and implement program changes, explore new systems, and propose solutions while being hopeful (not fearful) of the outcomes.
When my supervisor said, “We honor failure here,” she allowed me the space and freedom I always longed to have at work — one where creativity and trust reigns, where success and failure are self-defined, and where people know the world isn’t ending if something isn’t “right.” When the full Tsai CITY team followed up with actual practices that support this desire to honor failure, I knew this was a safe space. I knew that this workplace is one where, despite being a black woman who has to work twice as hard to get half of what others have, I am allowed the same grace as everyone else.
Learn more about Tsai CITY here. Want to talk to Zoe or other members of our teams? Check out our office hours.
