While failure in the past was taboo, today it has become really popular. Changes are so sudden and vertiginous, that if a product takes two years to go the market, it is already obsolete. Overcoming the fear of failure is one of the skills that leaders need to develop to facilitate a culture of innovation.
Versión en Español | In the era of continuous change, only continuous learning can save us, but are we ready to fail in the pursuit of learning? One of the main enemies of innovation is fear. Fear of failure, fear of losing, fear of being ridiculous. But if we want to grow and improve, we need to go bold and try. Now the question is, why are we afraid of trying? How can we overcome it? Is it worth it?
Why are we afraid of innovation?
Each of us responds to stress and fear differently. Some are motivated by fear, others are paralyzed. And our response also varies according to the context. If we want to maintain the status quo, we should better not stress out proposing new ideas or uncovering issues.
People tend to avoid doing things that can negatively influence how others perceive their competence. This a form of self-protection, though it can impact negatively how people interact in a team. People who do not feel psychologically safe avoid proposing ideas or speaking up if they notice a problem in the process.
We are afraid to fail or be perceived negatively because we do not want to risk what we have. A new idea could be mind-blowing and start a chain reaction. Being the first can be good, but the consequences sometimes can be scary too. It must have been scary to be the Copernicus that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe. Edison failed 999 times until the first light bulb worked at try #1000. In these cases, they were one-person entrepreneurs, but what happens when we are part of a company, or even within a family? We tend to stay quiet and avoid risky proposals to maintain the status quo and reduce the suffering of being rejected or punished.
Failure is the new status quo
Actually, fear of failure causes more pain than failure itself. It affects all other activities that one performs, and can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We suffer more because we are not doing what we want, or because we are doing it, but halfway, to avoid more future suffering. While in reality, much of what we want to avoid is just multiplied x 10 in our minds. We just think about what is the worst that can happen, and we do not clearly see the best that can happen.
Besides, the way in which leaders react to failure, make our employees react in similar ways, we are role models. Sometimes, we not only avoid proposing ideas, but we discourage others to do it. We are afraid that others will make us look bad, either because their idea doesn’t work, or because it is too revolutionary and we didn’t think of it before.
As leaders, entrepreneurs and company owners, we have to demystify the fear of failing to be able to embrace innovation from anybody in the company. Otherwise, we are mining our chances to do something really amazing.
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In an interview with Harvard professor Stefan Thomke, Booking.com mentioned that they fail 9 times out of 10, so their status quo is to fail. If you are trying new features and testing them in front of the customer all the time, it is more common to fail than not to fail. They don’t want to fail of course, but it is the only way to achieve innovations and changes on their website that will attract the customer faster and better than the competition. In order to achieve this, they are looking to promote a context where people are not afraid to fail. All employees are constantly making changes to the online website until the actual customer visits statistics show what works and what does not.
Facing your fears
Michelle Poler, a Venezuelan entrepreneur who currently lives in New York, started a campaign called 100 fears in 100 days, recording how she faced each of her 100 fears. From this experience, she became a recognized speaker on the subject, founding Hello Fears to help others to get out of their comfort zone and feel empowered. Michelle stresses that far from wanting to avoid fears, we must understand that we have them, and face them. If facing a fear, such as speaking at a meeting, defending an idea or publishing a video, is likely to help you accomplish your purpose in life, then you just take the risk!
Michelle Poler
Our mind is set to say more NO than yes. What if we spend more time thinking about what is the best that can happen if we take the risk?
If we are going to fail: fail often, fail fast
Although it seems counterintuitive, in this age of agile failing quickly is more productive in the long term than seeking perfection, or doing nothing at all. Companies prefer to explore and test as much as possible with the real customer until a positive result is achieved. Making mistakes should no longer be something taboo, but simply an important part of the innovation process. The key is not to fall in love with an idea. If it doesn’t work out, go ahead with the next one, Fail often, fail fast. Ideo’s slogan, for example, is “fail often to succeed sooner”.
Google, for example, says that mistakes to be productive have three characteristics: they are detected quickly, they are not too big to impact the name of the company, and they allow us to learn from the error (extracted from Clayton Christensen’s book “The Innovator’s DNA”).
Create a learning culture
Do we want a culture of fear or a culture of learning within our team? To create a learning culture, it is important to demonstrate to the team that:
– Errors, delays or even changes are part of the process. They are not punished. We need to accept that they will happen.
– Communicating when something is wrong as soon as possible is more important than not failing at all
– Blaming or judging someone does not improve the probability of success, it only reduces the probability of generating more ideas in the future, people will not feel safe to speak up.
– Testing has a sole objective, and it is to learn and build something better customized to the customer. If it didn’t work out, but we learned, it means we have a better chance to be more successful next time.
– Breakthrough innovations require risk-taking to make them happen (extracted from Clayton Christensen’s book “The Innovator’s DNA”). But risk-taking can be smart if you use data to support your thinking, train people with discovery-driven skills and build a culture where they feel free to innovate.
RECOMMENDED TRAINING: The WE culture
Let’s start today!
What we can do to improve our team’s reaction to failure is to coach them to make it a more positive experience. We have to initiate more conversations with our team, asking for ideas, inviting them to collaborate, explore and innovate. Listen to the ideas carefully, compare pros and cons together, if it is possible to get data or test with the client with a minimum investment. And finally, if the idea doesn’t work as expected, do not look for someone to carry the burden. Try to understand what can be improved, learn from it, define a process to share those learning with others, and keep trying. You don’t need to punish or reward, results speak by themselves.
Building a culture of innovation and learning will help you as well as your team to break free from the fear of failure.
Lu Paulise – Coach, book author and speaker
luciana@biztorming.com
@lupaulise
2 Comments
carpet scrubbers · 22 December, 2020 at 6:06 pm
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Cómo superar el miedo a fallar para crear una cultura de aprendizaje – Biztorming · 6 February, 2020 at 3:30 am
[…] English version | Miedo a fallar, miedo a perder, miedo a ser ridículo. La forma en que como líderes reaccionamos ante el fracaso, hace que nuestros empleados reaccionen de manera similar antes similares situaciones. ¿Estamos dando el ejemplo correcto a nuestros empleados? […]