Stuart Thompson, creative innovation manager at creative marketing agency RPM, explains why the pursuit of perfection without the acceptance of failure is damaging businesses.
From fitness to finance, we are all seemingly subject to the intangible pressure of succeeding and the ubiquitous stigma of failure that sits at the heart of modern society. This is especially true in the commercial world, with consumers becoming more demanding of products and services, with anything that doesn’t make the cut swiftly consigned to the tech equivalent of room 101.
As a result, complacency is no longer an option. If you aren’t innovating you will be left behind. As Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg said: “Mark [Zuckerberg] worries the most about the lack of change, of innovation, becoming the innovator’s dilemma company that gets big and stops moving, stops staying ahead.”
CEOs and founders are looking to their creative people to keep their business relevant and profitable, with increasing pressure to create the ‘next big thing’ often overshadowed by a ‘must win’ mentality. Innovation is now a high stakes game.
A change in focus
This combination can have an unwanted side effect on our mind-set, stifle creativity and ultimately success in a chosen field because it prevents us from exploring truly innovative ideas. But what if we changed our focus from perfection to exploration? Would this free us from the spectre of failure?
We are surrounded by stories of famous entrepreneurs and unicorn start-ups: the pressure to succeed has never been greater. Many companies respond to this pressure by adopting an unwritten but strict ‘culture of perfection’ where success is mandatory and failure unthinkable. Innovators are tasked with creating the perfect solution first time around and, as a result, often play it safe to ensure they don’t fail.
It is a dangerous mindset that has only one outcome; inevitably something will not go to plan and fail. This will be seen as unacceptable, further adding to pressures on the team and effectively killing their ability to freely explore innovative ideas.
The irony of course is that by adopting a culture of perfection, businesses are going against the fundamental values that make the companies they aim to emulate so successful. In fact, instead of perfection, many of the world’s great innovators focus on exploration. They have made the switch from a ‘culture of perfection’ to a ‘culture of exploration’, freeing them from the strictures of success and the stigma of failure. This gives them the ability to explore new solutions to problems.
One company that embodies this attitude is Alphabet’s ‘X’ division or as the head of X, Astro Teller describes it, the “moon shot factory”. This eclectic group of minds aim to tackle some of the world’s largest problems with the latest technological solutions. Famous for projects such as Google’s self-driving car and unmanned WiFi balloons that bring internet connections to countries all over the world, X is at the forefront of some of the most radical ideas in the business.
Although the projects themselves are fascinating, the most interesting thing about X is arguably the culture they have built to allow these projects to happen at all. A culture that actively encourages people to explore ideas conventionally dismissed as ludicrous, a culture that accepts failure.
Removing barriers
It is easy to tell someone that no idea is a bad idea but in reality we naturally worry about how colleagues will react. Will we be demoted or even fired for our outrageous ideas? The answer to removing this barrier is, according to Teller, deceptively simple: “Make failure the path of least resistance, make it a safe option.”
In practice, this means celebrating failure by rewarding people for it. People who find a way to make their projects fail should be congratulated by their peers and even financially rewarded for the failure that they achieve.
From the outside, it seems to contradict all we know about successful business. However, by embracing failure as a fundamental part of success and tackling the hardest parts of the problem first, X gives its people freedom to fully explore all of the solutions, obvious or outrageous. Constantly iterating through failure and removing the barriers to free thought means that the end results are robust ideas and new approaches to problems that seemed insurmountable.
The fear of failure is a natural part of the creative process but it is also a symptom of the culture of perfection that exists in many businesses today. The pursuit of perfection without the acceptance of failure is doomed to restrict people to the obvious solutions to problems. However, once the culture of perfection is changed to a culture of exploration, accepting failure as part of the process, creative people will gain more freedom to devise innovative solutions to problems, which will ultimately benefit consumers and business as a whole.
As the inimitable Thomas Edison said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”