Why are We Failing at “Failing-Fast”?
Lime CEO Classics
The notion of “fail-fast” underpins many best practice stories about innovation and business growth. It makes sense: put stuff out there, get rapid feedback, choose from the best option, fix what isn’t working, then learn and share with others. Repeat (quickly).
In a volatile, complex, and uncertain world, this ability to learn fast and adapt is key to business success. As leaders and employees, we hear about the importance of a fail-fast mentality, and fail-fast practices gleaned from agile, lean sigma, and SCRUM, for instance, are held up as magic bullets to innovation and growth.
So, if we know what we need to do, and have identified a set of practices to do it, why is fail-fast so hard to actually implement? Why do companies struggle to leverage a fail-fast approach? Why have motivated leaders like us been unable to help our teams move in this direction? Why are we failing at fail-fast?
Mulling these questions myself, I happened be in my daughter’s elementary classroom and noticed a wall display. On the display was a series of cards reminding the students about the importance of making mistakes. The display read: “Mistakes are…expected, respected, inspected, corrected…and then I get smarter”. Later, I asked my daughter about this wall display. She described to me a recent mistake she made and how it was handled, reminding me that “mistakes make your brain grow”. Fail-fast the 8-year-old way!
As I thought about it, though, I realized that her story didn’t reflect my own experience with making mistakes in corporate life. Sure, from podiums to bullet points on a slide, we have our own wall displays that say mistakes are okay, but in action, how we get on together embodies a very different set of values about making mistakes.
Perhaps this is why it’s been so hard to implement fail-fast?
When you think about our interactions with mistakes at work, it rarely feels like it’s a tool for “getting smarter”. We track our sales goals and have to explain when we are behind. Our projects are subjected to reviews where we are in the green or red, calling for additional work to handle issues or delays. The majority of airtime with our bosses and teams focuses on what’s going wrong or what needs to be fixed. We undergo performance evaluations where our pay and ego depend on how we hit or miss our objectives. (Even this article is about where we are falling short as leaders!) For sure, as working adults, our day-to-day experiences show us that performing well seems to require less mistakes.
Now, mistakes happen. Often. However, when big mistakes do occur that can’t be ignored, they typically become rationalized or repurposed into some important life lesson in an executive’s own story, shaping her or him into a more human, effective, and approachable leader. It’s a great parable from the stage, but let’s face it: when we hear these stories, we secretly hope that we can achieve our ambitions without ever having to go through such a “learning experience” ourselves. Yes, as humans, mistakes are inevitable, but they generally serve as silent steps on the ladders of achievement and success. If we were to put up a business wall display to describe how our community interacts, we might write: “Mistakes are…avoided, judged, punished, minimized…and then I can get ahead”. Making mistakes is shameful. Making mistakes is lonely. No one wants to make mistakes.
It’s no surprise, then, that trying to bring a fail-fast approach is doomed to failure. Fail-fast requires a relational system that celebrates—rather than exiles—mistakes. Treating fail-fast as a compartmentalized initiative misses the point that years of our ingrained beliefs and habits actually push us away from fail-fast. As a prerequisite for fail-fast, we need to create a new, healthy relationship with our mistakes. At a macro level, leaders trying to implement a fail-fast approach should consider all of the unintended signals present in the current strategy, process, people, and reward systems that discourage employees from making mistakes. At a micro level, each of us needs to be mindful about the content and types of dialogue we are having with teams and one-on-one. In many ways, “fail-fast” succeeds or fails within that conversational moment.
Perhaps our biggest failure as leaders is treating fail-fast as an operational challenge, rather than as the cultural challenge is seems to be? That’s a mistake I’d like to learn from…
