Failing: A learning opportunity

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It’s no secret that we at JMP are big fans of experimentation. We are inspired by the game-changing innovation in design of experiments (DOE) in the last few decades. Experimentation is important at both the organizational and personal levels

We can advocate a structured approach to learning faster from data and all the other benefits DOE brings, but if the organizational culture doesn’t grant permission to fail or understand the value of a structured approach, business as usual continues. Similarly, if we as individuals don’t have an objective framework to try new things and let fear of failure rule the day, we miss out on opportunities to learn, grow, and potentially experience huge successes.

The recently published Faceplant: FREE yourself from failure’s funk is an engagingly written book by Melisa Buie, PhD, Keeley Hurley, and Noël Kreidler, Med. Dr. Wendy Smith, who wrote the Foreword, summed it up nicely: “Faceplant is more than a book about failure. It’s a guide to growth, grounded in curiosity, emotional courage, and compassionate reflection.”

The authors balance personal stories as well as frameworks to deal with different failure scenarios to more objectively think about different kinds of failure. Trite but true, we all make mistakes, but do we learn and grow from them?

Some key points that resonated with me:

• Because we all fail at things, we need to have compassion with ourselves and each other.
• Reflecting on failure (especially by writing or journaling) helps us learn from it.
• So much in life is beyond our control, but by focusing on what we can control like our emotions and reactions, we can see the world through a more realistic lens to more objectively assess risks and opportunities.
• Curiosity is our super-power—capitalize on it! Mistakes and failures are just things that didn’t work—now we know. Curiosity can inspire new questions and pursuits.
• If something feels out of your comfort zone, view it as an opportunity to grow. It may not work out ideally, but it is an opportunity to learn.

While this book is primarily about dealing with personal failures, the authors convincingly make the case that you don’t have to be a scientist or engineer (though two of them are) to approach life with an experimentation mentality and that “creating a culture of experimentation in our own lives allows us to see failure as an opportunity…” If more of us had that worldview, a more experimentation-friendly culture would be reflected in our places of work as well.

As a society, we incur so many opportunity costs by randomly trying new things and not learning from them. The workplace equivalent is testing one factor at a time often resulting in wasted time, effort, and resources, sub-optimal or flat-out bad decisions with wide-reaching ramifications. We don’t give ourselves the opportunity to maximize learning from these efforts because we aren’t experimenting with an objective framework.

While we can’t eliminate emotions and reactions to life events, Faceplant is a great reminder of the importance of curiosity, compassion, and controlling the controllable as we try new things in our personal (and professional) lives. Thanks to the authors for sharing some of their journey!