Most Things Will Fail, Get Over It

Extinction is a fact. Failure is commonplace. Ninety-nine percent of all species

and organisations that have ever existed have disappeared. Ninety-nine percent
of all species and organisations that exist will eventually disappear. Once you
accept that failure is commonplace, you are better able to succeed now and in
the future. You can start with a clearer understanding of innovation reality.

Failure of individual companies is not a bad thing for the economy. Failed
experiments by one firm provide lessons and knowledge available to others who
will eventually succeed. Failure of the old makes way for the new. Failure of the
less competent makes way for the more competent. Failure of the competent
often happens only after their efforts have forced the market to innovate.

Similarly, failure of individual products or projects is not a bad thing for a

company. The problem comes with particular kinds of failure. If the project or
product continues long after most people knew it was doomed. If you don’t treat
failure as an experiment then you will waste valuable lessons. If you find failure
built into company DNA you can’t get rid of faulty thinking.

Alessi, an Italian manufacturing company, described as one of the most important

factories of Italian design, celebrates failure. It has its own ‘Museum of Failure’
and a coffee table book full of prototypes that didn’t work. It wants to work at the
border between what is possible and not possible. One step too far towards
impossible and customers won’t understand it. One step too far towards possible
and everyone can produce it. Delivering products that customers love but cannot
get anywhere else relies on working at the border. And risking failure.

Learning – Acknowledging the role of failure allows you to look for lessons from
other people’s experiments rather than writing them off as worthless. The first
successful vacuum cleaner, rubber tyre, light bulb, computer, mobile phone, and
automobile all started as failures. Someone grabbed the lessons from past
attempts and succeeded.

Making mistakes can be the quickest way of learning. You can find out what
doesn’t work and can avoid wasting time. You can deliberately do what seems
unlikely to work. You may discover a non-obvious way of doing something that
sits on the high profit border. You may gain a greater understanding of what is
possible and impossible that guides future efforts.

Coping - No one likes to fail but understanding what failure is and what it means
can help. The disappointment of failing still hurts but it doesn’t hit so hard that
you can’t work effectively for weeks or months. Knowing that failing isn’t the end
allows you to recover quickly and get back in the game. People also find it easier
to admit problems. At Genentech, the pharmaceuticals firm, leaders receive
incentives to flag up failing projects. Better to compensate people than to let
them carry along as long term drains on cash and resources.

Viewing failure differently depends on company culture. People in low-self

esteem cultures conclude there is something wrong with them. They hide from
the problem. They seek sympathy not solutions. High-self esteem allows people
to take a problem-solving approach to failure. They assume there is a solution and
that they are capable of finding it.

Warning - Past success does not guarantee future success. People tend to praise
you for present results that have come about because of good decisions in the
past. Unfortunately, at the very moment you are enjoying your best results you
may be making the decisions that will lead your company to extinction. Believing
the praise makes it more likely that you will make the wrong decisions. It
encourages unfounded belief that the decisions of the past provide a guide to the
future.

Competing – Competition is all about mass experimentation. The good news is

that some of your many rivals will fail providing new opportunities. The bad news
is that some of them will succeed providing new challenges. You need to be able
to fail to compete. When Google floated on the stock market, it made this clear to
investors: "We will fund projects that have a 10% chance of earning a billion
dollars…Do not be surprised if we place smaller bets in areas that seem very
speculative or even strange.” So far, they have placed bets on thousands of ideas
including YouTube and a multi-million dollar competition for the first private
journey to the moon. Some will fail, many more will fail, and then succeed.
References

Hannah, L, 1999, Marshall's" Trees" and the Global" Forest": Were" Giant
Redwoods" Different? in Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries By
Naomi R. Lamoreaux, University of Chicago Press

Pierce, JL, Gardner, DG, Cummings, LL, Dunham, RB, “Organization-Based Self-
Esteem: Construct Definition, Measurement, and Validation”, The Academy of
Management Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp. 622-648

Ormerod, P, 2005, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction, and Economics,
Faber & Faber

Schoemaker, PJH, Gunther, RE, 2006, “The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes”,

Harvard Business Review, Jun2006, Vol. 84, Issue 6

Wylie, I, 2001, “Failure Is Glorious”, Fast Company, September 2001