Culture has a lot to do with fear of failure? I just have to look back at my school days and college to see that. Fear of failure is drilled into us from childhood and we never again recover from it.
Felt very inspired reading “FAIL WISELY” chapter in “The Creator’s Code”. This is probably the part of the book I will keep coming back to whenever fear of failure glooms over. Sharing some excerpts from the book in this post.
Creators share one trait: failure.
Some fail early. Most fail often. Almost all of them will fail again. But something deeper occurs as a result:
Failure provokes learning.
As we hatch new ideas, we discover that much of what we would like to predict is unpredictable. Difficult conversations, surprising outcomes, and product flaws occur constantly. It’s neither fun nor comfortable, but failure is necessary. One of the things that’s great about Silicon Valley is that failure is a badge of honor because people here value the learning that goes on.
Creators cultivate an ability to be truly — sometimes brutally — honest with themselves about success and failure; at the same time, they maintain a resolve that helps them learn from mistakes. Creators are transparent about short-comings and acknowledge when they need help. Self-awareness is crucial. They don’t hide from failures or hide failure from others.
In fact, creators welcome small failures as a way to push themselves. “What have you failed at today?” can be a question at the dinner table! Creators become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
To fail wisely,
- they place small bets
- set a failure ratio
- believe enough to persist
- turn setbacks into strengths
PLACE SMALL BETS
You have to see failure as the beginning and the middle, but never entertain it as an end. By placing small bets, manage failure wisely. Fire bullets before cannonballs so you get to recalibrate your target. Unafraid of failure, you succeed by learning from mistakes.
Before you realise you are failing, you are testing. You can call these tests failures, but we take them as ways of learning and capturing and analysing data. Creators test ideas in low risk experiments and quickly, creatively, and inexpensively gather insights to determine whether a product or idea will take off. By taking small risks, they avoid catastrophic mistakes. Experiments yield better results than simply trying to perfect one concept, product, or idea.
SET A FAILURE RATIO
How much failure is acceptable? Ten percent? Twenty percent? More? Creators decide that ahead of time. They aim not for perfection but to ensure that they take enough risk. Being prepared for a certain number of failures allows them to experiment to find the way forward. They take a holistic view of failure, recognizing that even blunders often have value.
Creators don’t fear failure. Instead they find ways to soften it’s impact. One way is to take the focus off individual failures and evaluate results in a larger context. The most successful investors get ahead by choosing more winning stocks than losers.
The optimal failure ratio is specific to the creator and may be higher or lower depending on the organisation, industry and culture. As a rule of thumb, the lower the cost of failure, the higher the failure ratio can potentially be. If you are not failing, you are probably not being aggressive enough. Creators set time and financial limits to know when to shift.
As companies grow successful, risk tolerance shrinks. But in a fast changing environment, you have to fight against the desire to just keep doing what worked before.
Heard of 70–20–10 Google formula? Spend 70% of Management time improving core business, 20% to adjacent businesses and 10% exploring completely new ideas. For VC’s, Failure Ratios can surpass 70%.
Learning from failure makes you a more valuable asset.
Once we realise that we can fail even if we do everything “right” in a fast changing environment, setting a failure ratio becomes a smart thing to do. Pushing our own boundaries to test our abilities helps us grow and prepare for what might come next. If we set our failure ratio too high and experience too many setbacks, it can be adjusted downward. Our own ratio may change, based not only on what industry and job we are in but also at different points in our career, depending on family, finances, health, or other concerns. They key is to set a failure ratio that is greater than zero.
BELIEVE ENOUGH TO PERSIST
Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX): I worry a lot about failure. I feel fear quiet strongly. If something is important enough, or you believe that something is important enough, even if you are scared, you keep going.
It’s easier to accept setbacks when you are convinced your work matters. Creators are passionate about what they do, and that devotion allows them to endure hardships that come their way.
Sometimes, failures can be humbling.
Improvisational comics perform without a script. Improv actors accept a premise, even if it is not particularly good, and aim to improve upon it. If one bit does not work, they don’t reject it. Rather than worry about the parts that don’t work, the performers simply let the story unfold. This framework is valuable to creators. The ability to accept reality as is and build on the context, whether it is in a comedy club with an eager audience or in a market hungry for new products and ideas, is critical to success. By thinking quickly and maintaining an open mind, Improv Comedians and Creators float all sorts of ideas with confidence, knowing some will succeed while others will fall short.
The real value in improvisation is that it allows creators to try new ideas without fear of failure. It requires astute observation, quick thinking, and an ability to move rapidly to the next idea without forgetting what was learned.
TURN SETBACKS INTO STRENGTHS
Don’t let grass grow beneath your feet. A large part of a creator’s success is an ability to retool ad look ahead. Creators don’t expend energy on past failures. They learn and take the lessons forward. It’s really not about what happens to you in life; it is about how you deal with it. Creators maneuver their way around problems. They overcome weaknesses with improvised solutions.
Creators have the ability to make a right turn, left turn, or U turn, and start again when circumstances dictate, While failure is not fun or easy, the vast majority of failures are surmountable. The biggest failure of all would be refusing to try.
altLearners 
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