But I don't actually want more failure…
Of course you don't! What we really want is learning and innovation. It's just that a healthy relationship with failure is vital to achieving those. This work is too often misunderstood as celebrating or embracing failure. To set the record straight, terms like "flawesome" are only ever used by people so far removed from failure, they’ve forgotten what it’s actually like.
The goal of Fail Forward work is not to celebrate failure, but instead to build acceptance that failure is inevitable. Therefore, the wisest thing any of us can do is to foster a healthy and productive response to it.
Why should a healthy relationship with failure be a top priority, and not a nice-to-have?
We know innovation is vital to stay relevant and competitive. Every exec says this in every speech! Yet innovation just isn't happening. Perhaps we're super busy but unable to kill the lower value work. Or our staff are burnt out and disconnected so we're struggling to build healthy, trusting, and courageous teams. Maybe there has just been too much change recently so taking more risk feels hard and tiring. Regardless, a healthy relationship with failure is at the root of addressing the barriers to innovation.
What is the relationship between Intelligent Failure and Agile?
Agile is a great process and structure for a way of doing work where continuously adapting is built in. But we can go through all the steps of big 'A' Agile and still not actually be small 'a' agile. To learn and adapt as we go requires a healthy and productive relationship with failure. One where we expect failure, seek out feedback to understand how we need to change, and don't have any trouble letting things go that aren't working!
In short, Intelligent Failure is the way of being - the relationship we have with our failure. Agile is the structure that only works with that relationship in place.
Why do you insist on making your content interactive, even for keynotes?
Failing well is a lot like falling well. I bet you've never thought about how you fall before. You just assume your instincts will take care of you when the time is right. But did you know that when we trip and fall everything our body naturally does to protect itself is actually the opposite of what we should be doing? (Starts to make sense why falling injuries are the most common cause of emergency room visits, eh?) And yet, there is a right way to fall that we just haven't learned. The tuck-and-roll response simply requires awareness of our instincts and practice falling in this new way.
Failing well is the same. We have to practice it to be able to overcome our instincts. That's why we make everything interactive. Because everyone knows we should respond well to failure - and nobody does so without practice.
What if I want more than just one workshop or talk but I'm not sure it's worth the investment?
If you want to spark a conversation and see what happens, then an initial talk or workshop is great! But nothing is really going to change without investing in the mindsets, skills and structures to reinforce a new way of relating to failure. This often means supporting managers to consistently reinforce a healthy relationship with failure on their teams, and coaching internal learning and innovation folks to provide ongoing support.
But that investment is hard. It often requires exposing where leaders say we want X but we keep rewarding for Y. We often have to tradeoff some efficiency, performance and perfection in pursuit of exploration, innovation, experimentation - at least in the short-term. If that change doesn't feel possible right now, then stick to a talk and invest when it makes sense.
If you’re trying to decide if it's worth it, I might ask how important is innovation, experimentation and learning to you? How vital is it to your future?
What do Fail Forward's bigger projects typically look like?
The relationship almost always starts the same way: Ashley gives talk or a workshop which allows us to get to know each other better. If it's a good fit, then we start talking about what the specific needs of the organization are. What are your specific barriers to a healthy relationship with failure? What skills are most needed? What mindsets, if shifted, could really open us up to learning and experimentation?
With that insight, we can talk about points of leverage - the one or two things that if changed, could really unlock your potential for a healthy relationship with failure. Maybe that's a skill building workshop for people managers. Maybe it's working with HR to adapt job descriptions to include learning and innovation. Maybe it's looking at how we reward experimentation and minimize the drivers for perfectionism. Maybe it's a talk for your whole staff so everyone has the same language and understands the mindset needed for innovation and learning. Maybe it's working with the whole executive team to pick key actions to shift organizational culture.
Most importantly, we love working with existing clients to help them drive a fail forward culture from the inside. We know your company is awesome, but we don't want to work for you forever! What we care about most is creating change that lasts.
Have a question? We’d love to hear it!