Fêting failure

I’ve always suspected there’s a damn sight less success around than people claim, and a damn sight more dumb luck and hidden failure brushed under the carpet. There’s a lovely piece by John Coventry on failure over on Wonkcomms today that really struck a chord with me:

I’ve always thought that being on the frontline of communicating the work of organisations carries an odd set of pressures. We find ourselves with responsibility for a final product over which we have little control. The best we can do is make conditions as perfect as possible and let nature take its course. It’s a lot like breeding pandas, as staff at Edinburgh Zoo will tell you.

He goes on:

At Change.org we do something called the Festival of Failure. It’s a fun informal session as part of wider catch up sessions where each member of the team is encouraged to chat about something that went wrong that week. It’s funny, cathartic and reminds us that it’s only work; that even the best of us get it wrong sometimes and, most importantly, it gives other people a chance to not make the same mistake.

Being open about failure is a real organisational strength. It implies that staff trust each other to get it right – but also that a culture exists in which it’s fine to experiment, get things wrong and improve. Screw ups have traditionally been a subject reserved for the post-work pint on Friday, but I honestly think it should have a role in the office too. Failure is very real and can be incredibly de-motivating if it’s not talked about. We should embrace it and make our work better in the long run because of it.

Amen, brother.

I’ve tried in the past to write something here about failures, but never quite got it right somehow – ‘My five favourite all-time cock-ups’ remained resolutely in draft for several years. But I’m a massive believer in sharing, warts-and-all, what’s gone right and what hasn’t, though perhaps the trick is to share as a team as John’s does, rather than with the outside world.

But one thing I’ve started doing at work recently is keeping a little red notebook of cock-ups. When I screw something up and feel bad about it, I’m trying to capture that feeling, what I did, and what I’d do differently next time on paper, in a little notebook just for me. It doesn’t sound like the most uplifting read, I admit, but I’m hoping that it will help me reflect on some the patterns, impacts and lessons learned from those mistakes – cock-ups I might otherwise have tried to bury deep in my subconscious. We’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, take inspiration from John, and spend 5 minutes in your next team meeting talking about what we can learn from the cock-ups we each made last week, rather than puffing up the successes. Go on, I dare you.

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