Reflections on Failure

Several weeks ago I presented to Calgary's JCI chapter.  My presentation was about failure.  I started with a TEDx Video where Tom Wujec presents on how building a marshmellow tower leads to team building and creative problem solving.

Two other sources influenced my presentation:

"Mistakes were Made but not by Me" by Carol Tavris and Elliott Aronson

and the "Logic of Failure" by Deitrich Dorner

Celebrating Failure – A Prototype to Life

I knew that I wanted to talk about failure. What I couldn’t figure out was, what aspect of failure should I discuss? Yes, there have been many failures; educational, relationships, professional. But they all have something in common; they all resulted in my own rush to the finish line instead of prototyping the potential solution and adjusting along the way.  I have since learned the value of prototyping... because that is how technology is built. If I waited for perfection we wouldn’t get out of the gate, and if I released a finished a product I wouldn’t have a market because the community of consumers wouldn’t have been brought into the process.

So I am going to share with you some of my failures. Not because I want to have a pity party, but because I learned more from my failures than from my successes.  Because I wish more investors would ask me what I failed at so that they could see that I can learn, adapt, adjust accordingly, resolve, reconfigure and move on.  Because when I am working with people and they have bought into the vision for my company, that they also understand that this vision is built on past experience and that there are bound to be a few other failures along the way.

Who here, in their lifetime has been to a job interview? Did you ever get asked the question – describe one thing that you pushed through a difficult situation to a successful conclusion?  Or something along success... Did you share how you failed or only what was successful?

As Canadians, we don’t celebrate our failures.  And it’s a shame.

In September I had the opportunity to go to San Francisco and experience the Silicon Valley Venture Capital World.  It was so interesting listening to the venture capital investors, because they described their failures and then how they made it big.  They took pride in the fact that they lost (in some cases millions of dollars), because it was the experience of screwing up that allowed them to succeed in the next version.

A Canadian train-wreck in action is Research in Motion (RIM). When people talk about RIM, it is about how the company sucked the life out of a high potential tech product; as opposed to valuing the corporate journey that RIM is on. RIM’s success is in large partm, how it is handling failure.  When we look back on RIM we will probably do what we have done with Nortel.  Shake our heads, ask the age-old Canadian question, “how is the government going to protect those employees’ pensions?”  We might even chastise RIM and share the other age-old Canadian approach to market growth, “they should have taken their company to the United States.”  Or people might even go further and say, “When will Canadian companies learn that our country is used for prototyping, but not for long-term viability?”

No – we don’t celebrate failure and as a result, we don’t know how to fail.  This attitude starts at a young age.  Everyone is a winner and we see this every day - children are rarely held back in school when they don’t grasp the basics; in university students are seen as a revenue stream so whatever it takes to keep bums in seats (like extra assignments so that the students ultimately pass). So when failure does happen, we hide it under the rug and tell people that it was a blip.  Or we might even pretend to be busier than we really are to make people think that we are successful.  Of course, this makes a public failure that much harder... Oh how pride gets the best of us.

Some basic tenents that we are taught early on have been catalogued on poster “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

I like this poster because it gives permission to experiment and experience failure.  It also sets the ground-rules for how to manage failure.  Hold hands, watch out for traffic, stick together... very sound advice when facing an imminent disaster head on.

So my successful failures...

When I was 18 I promised myself that I would take time off to travel and try something new each year.  I have kept that promise.  This also means that I have put myself in situations that take me out of my comfort zone, so failure was part of the package.  One year, I decided to dedicate some time to ballroom dancing.  I started by going to ballroom dance socials around the city.  Then I started taking group lessons, but soon realized that girls out-numbered guys and if I was going to get any good at this new found passion I need to have private lessons.  I spent about 6 months taking private lessons once or twice a week.  One day my instructor told me about a dance competition and that I should enter.  Why not... I had been practising, I felt okay when it was just me in the dance studio, how hard could it be?  So I borrowed a “party dress” from a friend, bought ballroom dance shoes and proceeded to twirl my way around the dance floor.  I competed in four dances, but it was the Waltz that was most memorable, because that is where I failed.  Really, you would think counting to 3... 1, 2, 3; 1,2,3... would be fairly straight forward.

Throughout the whole competition I was laughing and smiling and feeling great about my accomplishment. And then I forgot the routine. COMPLETELY.  I stopped cold... which means that I wasn’t following my partner’s lead, because if I was, I would have been able to trust the direction that we were headed.  Not only did I stop cold once, not twice, but three times!!!  The routine wasn’t that long.  I was mortified. I think I was most embarrassed because I felt I had let my instructor down.  Needless to say, I placed 2^nd ... against myself. I was the only one in my division so really it should have been a shoe-in for first. But alas, “So You Think You Can Dance” was promptly crossed off my list.  But here is what I learned from this experience – I love music and rhythm and I have to take responsibility for my lack of ability because you can’t just blame your partner for you failure.  I also learned that sometimes I don’t have to lead, because when I try to lead I when I am not supposed to, I end up in second.  This is a hard lesson for someone who is first born, an experiential learner and has always taken a prominent decision-making role in most instances.

Failure #2 – Gallery 213 was my first attempt at a for-profit social venture. It was also the first time I had gone into business with someone. It was also the first time that I really realized what a shitty communicator I can be when I want something very badly, and I’m stressed out. 

Did anyone ever go through Gallery 213 in Art Central? Don’t worry if you say “no”... Like I said, this was a failure of magnitudes.  This failure includes, not listening to my gut, focusing on the dream but not considering the reality, and not trusting my potential.

Here’s the premise – I love beautiful things. But I can’t afford beautiful things so I figured, if I owned an art gallery I could run my office from the gallery, support the local art community and be surrounded by things that I otherwise couldn’t afford. It was a vision that this would be the space for artists and charities and philanthropists to come together and experience what a vibrant community could look like. 

A few things – artists and business don’t always mesh. Throw in a recession, a difficult business relationship and a very complex vision and what ensues is chaos but also some magic. It was from Gallery 213 and one exhibit in particular, the Milestones project, that I was inspired to bring together people to launch the Social Good Accelerator. 

The Milestones Project is a photo exhibit of children from around the world blown up to life-size that shows that we have more in common with each other than what makes us different.  I brought this exhibit in, found sponsors, and used it to promote the gallery. 8 weeks later the gallery went under but the exhibit was a success.  How can I say that? Because the night of the exhibit opening, Art Central had never been busier, we had representation from all levels of government, the photographer and his wife were there and most importantly over the course of the 12 weeks 6 schools and a university came through to have discussions around “what we have in common,” and how do we teach children some of these softer values that are all-too-often contradicted in mainstream media when we are focusing on the differences.

So it was a HUGE business failure – financially, emotionally, socially... DISASTER.

How did I climb out? I bought myself some breathing room by breaking the lease and focusing on what my Hedgehog is.  I am good at connect people. So by taking time to refocus on my strengths and see what was happening in the marketplace I was able to climb back out.  Six months later I pulled together the committee that is now heading up the Social Good Accelerator, and we are building community in a more paced and pragmatic way. 

Failure #3 – Balancing life... This is still a work in progress.

What is balance, really? For some it is having time to work out, for others it is having time for family... It all boils down to time.  I have failed at this too.  My family teases me because I have to schedule them in. My response is at least you’re being put in the schedule... Unlike a few other things like yoga... not that I am comparing spending time with parents, sisters, nephews to working out. Though chasing a 2 year old is pretty physical!

In all seriousness, failure in one’s personal life has ripple effects across everything. Paying bills, house maintenance, health and wellness... everything.  About 6 years ago I was hit head on with this reality. I swore after that experience that I would always put family first.  What that has meant is that I work later hours and on weekends, but it also means that I am there to babysit my nephews, have sleepovers, enjoy dinner with my sisters and their husbands and not miss out on some of the important things.

Thomas Homer Dixon, in his book the Upside of Down, talks about catagenisis – a re-birth after catastrophe.  That is why we need to celebrate failure.  Because it is from failure that we achieve success.  Sometimes we have to fail at a few things in a few different ways to achieve that success.  In my case, I just find new ways to fail!  I also have found new ways to measure success.

Society has set certain expectations of what success looks like – money in the bank (kind of ironic with the state of the economy), size of your house and neighbourhood, company that you work for and job title.  I think that societal failures are starting to shift these success metrics. We are starting to value where people donate their time, talent and treasures more than where they spend their work day.  We are starting to have more dinner-table conversations about what is happening in the world.  What we think we should be accountable for and to whom is also shifting. Our social network is moving beyond the 100 or so people in our immediate sphere of influence to include those who are more distantly connected.  All this is happening because of catastrophic failures.  These failures are bringing people together in more genuine ways.

So what have I learned from failure:

1. I don’t always have to lead
2. I can place 2^nd against myself
3. My family comes before everything
4. Trust my instincts
5. Surround myself with people who I respect because of their core values, not because of my immediate needs
6. Businesses fail, people fail, but businesses only succeed because people learn from their failures to build successful businesses

So here's to the end of 2011 and on to 2012. I am sure there will be more failures to learn from but I hope that there will be just as many successes.