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5 Ways to Talk About Failure at Your Work

talk about failure at work

I recently led a Fail Festival for Grantmakers In Aging’s annual conference. It was wonderful to participate in-person again after hosting virtual Fail Fests during the pandemic.

GIA is a community of funders mobilizing money and ideas to strengthen resources for us, as we age. They were excited for their members to speak about their failures in supporting older adults and how we can all learn to speak about failure in our organizations.

5 Ways to Talk About Failure at Work

I was honored when their CEO brought forth four ideas from the Fail Festival in her keynote presentation to close the conference. She inspired many members to reflect on their organization’s culture and adopt these themes.

1. Recognize and Accept Failure

Life and Fail Festivals teach us that failure happens. Failure is multifaceted, nuanced, and occurring right now in each of our organizations. We all know it. Now accept it. Then talk about it and learn from it.

Your organization does not need to have a Fail Fest each year to recognize that failure happens and to learn from it. The point is not to celebrate failure for the sake of a good laugh. We want to celebrate failure as innovation and learning.

2. Honestly Talk About Failure

We should all do a better job of talking about failure openly in our organizations. There are many ways to do this.

  • We can start by being more honest with our staff.
  • We can be more accepting with grantees and partners.
  • We can even have our own internal Fail Fests.

Whatever method we choose, the Fail Fest concept should give you strength to take calculated risks, to think big, invest in the big leaps moving us all in a new direction.

3. Encourage Innovations

How can we encourage innovation in our own organizations? In our partners and grantees? Here is an idea: fail small, fast, and open.

Set up and fund experiments – too small for log frames or onerous reporting requirements, but large enough to try out an idea. Then shower your innovators with these grants. The only requirement is to honestly, openly test a specific theory of change and document the results.

Do not anticipate success with all the ideas that you invest in. In fact, expect multiple failures, just like a venture capitalist. Invest in the ideas that work, don’t sweat the ideas that do not.

Crucially, have everyone present their idea and result publicly – so we can also learn faster.

4. Demand a Minimum Level of Failure

If failure is a mark of innovation and risk taking, then we should be demanding a minimum level of failure as a proxy for how innovative an organization is.

Say something like a 10% of projects by number or value.

This is large enough to get staff attention and motivation, new enough that donors and funders will want to support it, but small enough that failure of any one project, or even groups of them, will not cause undue stress for organizational leadership.

5. Make Learning from Failure a Norm

Now along with accepting failure, we should expect the organization to show it learned from that failure – in that project and in their activities overall. And be public about it.

The goal is to establish a level of failure as healthy for the overall philanthropic community – for us, and for donors, and the public in general. So we can get past failure-as-catastrophic mindset and into thinking of failure as risk tolerance in innovation.

In fact, the point of Fail Festival events is to show that failure is an option and it is acceptable – today and throughout the year

Small Business Owners Learning from Fail Festival SBLC 2021

Small Business

It’s time for a Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership and innovation in pushing the boundaries of what is possible and profitable.

The 10th Annual Small Business Leadership Conference, presented by the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, part of the Florida State University College of Business, is on a mission to make failure acceptable in small business discussions.

There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Three panelists will join Keynote Speaker Wayan Vota to talk about their past business fails and lessons learned for future success at the Thursday Keynote Session.

Then we’ll open up the discussion for audience participation and hear about failure they have had in business either before or during the pandemic, how they overcame, and why their failure shaped them for success in their current or new business.

Fail Festival DC 2017

Fail Festival DC 2017

Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why its time for Fail Festival 2017. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Join us for the 7th annual event, and expect much laughter as 300 of your peers and colleagues navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learn how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.

Fail Festival 2017 will be hosted by the Digital Impact Alliance, Plan International, TechChange, and FHI 360 on Thursday, December 7th, in Academy Hall. We will have an open bar and tasty nibbles to lubricate the conversation and celebrate the capstone ICT4Drinks event of the year.

Sign up now to attend – a ticket is mandatory for attendance.

Fail Festival DC 2017
5:30pm-8pm
Thursday, December 7th
FHI 360 Academy Hall
1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20009.

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Featured Presenters (so far!)

Agenda

  • 5:30-6:45pm – Open Bar Happy Hour
  • 6:45-8:00pm – Fail Festival
  • 8:00-8:30pm – Applause and Last Call

Fail Festival DC 2016

fail festival DC 2016

Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why its time for Fail Festival 2016. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.
Continue reading Fail Festival DC 2016

Fail Festival DC 2015

Fail Fest DC 2015

Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why its time for Fail Festival 2015. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Join us for the 5th annual event, and expect much laughter as 300 of your peers and colleagues navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learn how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.
Continue reading Fail Festival DC 2015