I have to confess that I met the Silicon Valley through the books and other writings from the people that was actually there. Quite a few years before being in the Bay Area for the first time, I already knew enough from the innovation culture there.
Once, I read a fantastic book called “Weird Ideas that Work” by Stanford faculty member Robert Sutton. It just changed the way I thought about business and management. The book described 11 and a half pieces of managerial thought that wouldn’t make sense outside the innovation culture of Silicon Valley. Ranging from defying superiors to hiring slow learners (of the organizational code), his ideas present a complete approach on how to build a creative company that delivers highly innovative products to the market.
But one of the ideas of the book, simple yet powerful, is: Reward success and failure, punish inaction.
This mind-blowing idea has changed the way I manage any team under my supervision ever since. Failure is a key component of innovation, because it helps people to feel comfortable with the cycle of trying and learning. Most innovations are non-predictable derivations of iterative experimentation.
Post It Notes are an example of this:
No one got the idea and then stayed up nights to invent it. A man named Spencer Silver was working in the 3M research laboratories in 1970 trying to find a strong adhesive. Silver developed a new adhesive, but it was even weaker than what 3M already manufactured. It stuck to objects, but could easily be lifted off. It was super weak instead of super strong.
No one knew what to do with the stuff, but Silver didn’t discard it. Then one Sunday four years later, another 3M scientist named Arthur Fry was singing in the church’s choir. He used markers to keep his place in the hymnal, but they kept falling out of the book. Remembering Silver’s adhesive, Fry used some to coat his markers. Success! With the weak adhesive, the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the pages.
But, failure costs big money, you’ll say. The company doesn’t plan to pay people to be playing with new ideas without knowing what to expect at the end of the process. If this is what you think, you’re probably right. But have you thought about the potential value of the possible outcomes of that process? And you don’t even have to pay for a special team to do this.
Smart people at regular positions often comes with new ideas that could help the company to make more money. As they’re doing their jobs or while they are in the shower, employees can imagine the greatest features of services ever. Actually, most innovation happens in a rather chaotic environment, where there is no specific intention to solve a problem but a constant positive attitude towards observation, experimentation and learning.
Employees at all levels should be rewarded for trying new things, even if the short term result is negative for the company. The positive results of innovation in the long run beat the small negatives.
So remember, if failure happens around the cubicles and it happens quite often, there’s a sign of a healthy organization. Encourage your peers to fail.
Only one more detail. If we’ve said there’s a big chance for your experiments to fail, then take this simple piece of advice: Fail cheap and fast.
Don’t keep up with experiments that take weeks or months. Start with a simple, resourceless, smart iteration and prove whether it works. If the answer is “yes, it might work”, iterate again with more resources. Otherwise, if the answer is “probably not”, then congratulate yourself and/or your peer for trying and go back to the beginning.
Great post!
I think its not easy to start with that culture because its not easy to check if something is failing or just waiting for success and itereting again(with more resources) can be the key to actually do it.
The people that invest THEMSELF in a project usually get good results and just wanting to fail fast or win can stop the emotional, 24/7, maverick investment of one-self to a project.
What do you think about that?
This is the natural way to do things, and it’s consistent with brainstorming – no idea should be discarded, the goal is quantity, not quality. Same with action vs. inaction. Action ensures success in the long-run, even if you fail once, you get up and you learn from your failure and move on to a more successful path. You’ll never learn this if you never do anything!
This is great post!! Specially about trying and trying again. And always looking to get something out of it. I have personally seen many by the way inventions, either for individuals or companies changing their initial idea after foreseeing a great opportunity on their way.
Think about the next level of embracing innovation, not only in product development but in organizational dvelopment, leadership, teamwork etc, think about democratic organizations.
@DFectuoso I think learning to fail is just step one. Once you feel comfortable with failure, you should improve your innovation process (Whatever that means)
As one good friend says, it’s about “FAIL Fast!” rather than “Try to FAIL!”. The whole point is to pursue success every single time. However, knowing that things can go wrong, increases your changes to make a big hit.
while reading it was hard not to remember that day when we reach to the phrase…. its fail fast, not try to Fail…!!! great post!
[...] two. Do whatever you need to let your peers decide and learn. Failure will be all around, especially at the beginning. But, trust me on this one. If people are let free to make their own [...]