Failing Fast

The ability to move on from failure is something we all must learn.

Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it - immediately. Stephen R. Covey Author and Speaker

It is one of the strengths in playing sports. You learn that you win some; you lose some. And sometimes, actually a lot of times, you can miss points, but still win the game, if you don't lose heart.

It also factors into cutting one's losses -- knowing when to move on...and it contributes to the fast pace of change in modern life.

I love the freedom that failing fast affords creativity. Thinking about it, it's what Thomas Edison did in looking for the filament for the light bulb. He allowed himself to fail as long as it took to find the solution. And he moved quickly to the next possible solution when the previous one wasn't workable.

Personally, I hate to fail at major things. I tend to internalize it. I tend to assess my ability to succeed before I enter an endeavor. OTOH, I don't consider it a failure when I'm in a learning mode. It's just a step in the process.

Balance again. Be kind to yourself when it feels like a failure, but might not be. You haven't seen the next step in the road yet.

Karin

A Startups Best Friend
Failing fast isn't just a strategy for startups. One of Silicon Valley's best companies at managing failure also happens to be its hottest - Google. "Fundamentally, everything we do is an experiment," says Douglas Merrill, a Google vice president for engineering. "The thing with experimentation is that you have to get data and then be brutally honest when you're assessing it." When introducing new features, Google has remained true to a "fail fast" strategy: launch, listen, improve, launch again.

During the brainstorming for the Google Toolbar, for example, the development team tried about five times as many key features as made the final cut, and most were discarded within a week of testing. Several of the features in the final version, including custom buttons and shared bookmarks, were prototyped in less than a week. Even when a feature is a full-blown failure, Google prefers to view it as an experiment that yielded useful [information.] Tom McNichol From Business 2.O The Next Net as reported by Bob Proctor in Insight of the Day as was the first quote.

Originally posted 2007-04-26 06:21:48.

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