Little failures

Here is a post about failure and risk.  Just what you all need!

I was reading Dawkins "the Selfish Gene" on the advice of a scientist friend and, well, it is a good and a compelling read.

Those gene sets that survive, do so through millions of machines and adaptations that failed.  It is almost as if it is the failure that is the crucial thing.   What I mean is, if the ratio of gene success is 1 successful adaptation for each 100,000 failures, then that tells you the "rate of failure" (ROF) in order to find success.  This is in the natural world, and I am not aware of gene's taking expert experienced advice.

Thinking about the underlying themes I was reminded of Napoleon Hill's commendation for each of us to have "the opportunity for applied failure", and of course Eddison's "I failed my way to success".  (If I have failed here in my quotations I am sure I will learn about it quickly!)

From a business point of view, Dawkins' billions of "gene machines" that dry out and die away unable to keep up with the changes in their world, are rather like the business failures that happen each day.   That's the metaphor at one level.  When you read the statistics on business failure, it's a pretty off-putting metaphor.

And yet although each failure contains a back story of some pathos (and some somewhat worse than getting a low grade essay score at school!) each also points towards success.  The key things here are to avoid allowing the negative connotations of the word to demotivate you, and to mine down to the learnings within each failure.  

What are the little failures?  What are the little learnings?

I am sure you are starting to get the drift of this post.  In my business experience, it is the ability to fail, without having to stop, that has taught me the most, probably because the immediate successes, few and far between, though welcome, were often surprising.  Hard won successes taught me things I was able to re-apply with similar effect, and keep in my kit bag of useful tools for life.

Napoleon Hill, unlike Dawkins, calls for unusual and compelling belief in order to create success.  He noted that most people don't have anywhere near enough belief to be successful.  I think he was right.  Most people are afraid of failure.  Fight or flight are fundamental reflexes.  We teach fear of failure from the first day.  Many cultures punish failure.  It's not a surprise that many people struggle with entrepreneurial-ism and have a reflex to blame others when failure arrives.   The blame game tends to suppress innovation.

Most new business ideas, whether a start up or just a new product or project, start in the mind; with an idea.  Then a huge amount of belief in the idea and the ability of the thinker to sustain them through the failures along the track.

With belief, available effort and gold are needed to sustain activity.  Like a scientist, entrepreneurs should then go looking for failures.  Small scale, obvious and quick are the best sort!  However any failure will do, and is just another fence knocked down on the way towards success.  Failure is interesting.   Like risk, the possibility of failure and consequences are one way in which we come to know life, and they keep us alert and sharpened to the possibilities.  Good marketing people tell you to do a limited but real test; the same idea is highly valued in new IT implementations, and in any profit and change projects.  Plan, do, check, act is an effective cycle that embraces failure in its design.

My post this week is designed to make you think about your organisation's approach to risk and failure.  Is the balance right?  In what areas so you need to reduce failure and in what areas do you need more?

We are all happy to think about return on investment, a calculation based on risk and return.  Perhaps one way to think about failure more positively is to develop an ROF, or "return on failure" measure.