United Way Innovation:Embracing Failure
The “F” Word. It’s a word we don’t normally drop into everyday conversation. Failure.
Failure is rarely discussed. It’s feared, shut down, belittled. It’s no surprise that people don’t like talking about their failures. But failure and innovation go hand in hand. When we fail, we muster the necessary courage and strength to open the door to new possibilities.
Many organizations have learned to embrace failure.
Dosomething.org holds an annual Fail Fest, a day-long celebration of failures. Fail Fest originated based on the idea that innovation and success are possible due to failure. At the last Fail Fest, they featured compelling topics such as “From Drug Dealer to CEO” and “How a Failed Bid for State Office lead to the Presidential Campaign”.
Dosomething.org also implements this practice in its office. Every six months, an employee is nominated for a Fail Fest where they give a PowerPoint presentation about a mistake they made and the lessons they learned all while wearing a pink feather boa. This practice is a wonderful reminder that failure happens and that you need to own up to your mistakes, learn from them and move on.
Versions of Failfest have manifested in a similar form called Failfaires. UNICEF’s Innovation unit has organized Failfaires to promote admitting and learning from failure in a safe environment. Their most recent Failfaire explored failed projects using mobile and ICT(Information and Communications Technology) in international development. They featured a failed model for early breast cancer detection, sanitation hackathon and tv and podcast series. UNICEF’s Innovation unit also implements Failure Fridays where their team goes around and shares something they succeeded at, failed at and something that confused them from the past week.
Katrin Verclas, the founder of Failfaires, remarks,” Development is a field within finite resources, and so the less money we waste, the better. And part of that is learning from the things that didn’t work, so that we don’t endlessly repeat them”
In the nonprofit sector, it is especially critical to grant staff the ability and flexibility to try. There is a tendency to highlight successes and rarely discuss failure due to the nature of donor relationships. After all, donors rarely like to hear failure.
In a Ted Talk by Dan Pallotta, founder of AIDSRide, he states, “Nonprofits are really reluctant to attempt any brave, daring, giant-scale new fundraising endeavor, for fear that if the thing fails, their reputations will be dragged through the mud. Well, you and I know when you prohibit failure, you kill innovation. If you kill innovation in fundraising, you can’t raise more revenue; if you can’t raise more revenue, you can’t grow; and if you can’t grow, you can’t possibly solve large social problems.”
The key to innovation from failure is to have a culture around dealing with and accepting failures, failing fast and learning from failure.
How does your organization transform failure into an experience that leads to better results?
