How to fail successfully

Zen and the progressive art of successful failure...

For anyone who’s ever trained in a martial art such as Aikido, you will be all too familiar with failure. The feeling of: being twisted into knots; the awkwardness of new techniques that you will get wrong again and again; and the feeling of being thrown through the air and ending up either on your back, or on your face, is one you will experience… a lot. Just like in a class

, those same feelings of being awkward, and getting twisted and thrown unexpectedly, happen in business, supported services, education, etc. and it happens to the very best of us.  There is, however, much we can do to both embrace failing more effectively, and the learning we gain from it, in order to achieve success.

Failure, and the learning that is taken from it, is something that is becoming more widely supported in the business community, and there is much to be said from inspirational quotes such as Edison and his 9,999 ways to ‘not’ make a lightbulb. However, with the best will in the world, we are not socialised enough to fail and to learn from it as it is being reported today; and we are so used to crafting our environments exclusively towards not failing. This can make it hard to put in place a practical means to use failure as the powerful learning tool it really is. This is where we can create an environment of progressive failure.

Progressive failure vs. constant failure

“Insanity, repeating the same action yet expecting a different outcome”

Albert Einstein

Because of the innate fear attached to failing, often many of us can make the same mistakes over and over again, without taking the time and action to really learn from them. This 'constant failure' is endemic, often requiring an outside observer to point out where things are going wrong. This is a harder learning process in some respects and is usually reactive, resulting in frustration, loss of confidence and missed opportunity.

'Progressive failure' is about stretching constantly undeveloped skills and approaches. Testing them, failing, learning from the specific points of failure and then adapting. All to be repeated until the new skills are embedded and the successful outcomes achieved. It is progressive failure that teaches kids to walk, David Beckham to score great free kicks, and Astronauts to fix a satellite in space. However moving from constant to progressive failure isn't initially as straightforward as the quote masters have us first believe...

Why it can be hard to work effectively with failure

“As a child you learn to walk by falling over”

School has a heavy emphasis on attainment, and rarely has the resources (including time) to truly understand where and why a student may have got something specifically wrong; and even less so to empower them to work it out for themselves and allow them to explore the points of failure. Therefore the culture is to not fail. Pass the mock test first time, don't fail it. And if you do, then just work harder. Rarely is time taken to explore specifically why someone got the answer wrong.

Parents can easily show upset when a child spills their drink, or drops their food, or fails to remember their times tables, and all of those micro-disapprovals become hardwired in our psyche. Sometimes the smallest things we experience when young can have the biggest effects later, and it’s no surprise that failure is listed as one of the greatest fears (Atychiphobia for anyone who wants to know its technical name).

This carries into adulthood and is something that is difficult at times to shake off. The emotions attached to failure through our socialisation mean that as adults (and children) we instinctively are driven to avoid it rather than use it to our benefit. This needs appreciating when rushing into development programmes for people and is often not taken into account as fully as it should be.

This resistance is further enhanced when the stakes and cost of ‘failure’ increase. This often results in the tolerance and support of using failure to learn decreasing even further. This is one of the biggest problems in creating truly effective learning environments. Pressure to succeed first time every time, where your assets are being sweated, and failure is not an option. So then, how do you expect people to continually improve?

Progressive Failure

To successfully fail, you must start with a degree of control and a lot of safety. In order to learn effectively from failing it needs to be in a relatively ‘safe’ environment. To build confidence, as well as competence, it is important that people do not feel either danger relating to the failure, or negative judgement from those supporting their development. It also means deliberate practice and progressive failure to push and stretch the envelope. While students in Aikido don’t have a savage maniac trying to strangle them to death in the Dojo, they still have to train in a way that stretches them, building up speed and pressure (deliberate practice), and that still can (and sometimes does) result in minor injuries on occasion.  They also receive a lot of encouragement when they screw it up, and are immediately led to focusing on what didn’t work (often the smallest of corrections yield the greatest improvements). The same environment can be of benefit when it comes to learning generally (workplace, education, etc)

How to set up an effective environment to fail

For any organisation looking to build the capability of your employees or service users you can benefit from creating and simulating the same progressive pressure when training for improvement, using the same principles we use in the Dojo.

1. Learn how to fall safely. I would suggest it is the one thing that will give the greatest confidence shot to anybody. You do not want to land on your head, therefore the first thing to learn is when things go wrong what is the safest position to be in and safest response. In a business, or with a vulnerable person, a mistake can be deadly and can escalate frighteningly fast. Unless you learn FIRST what to do if/when the ‘proverbial’ hits the fan, then you are likely to lack the confidence to stretch what you are attempting to achieve.

2. Start as the person who is likely to experience the failure. Be the person making the sales call (not the prospect), be the support worker training new ways to engage a highly challenging service user, etc. This puts you squarely in the learning zone and way out of your comfort zone. Do this first before becoming the prospect, vulnerable service user, etc. If you look at the image for this article for the first time, chances are you find yourself preferring to be the ‘Nage’ in aikido - performing the throw, rather than the ‘Uke’ who is flying through the air. The reality is both have equal merit and both become enjoyable to learn from.

3. Break it down. Break the steps you are intending to perform down into their key component parts. As the person on the receiving end of a failure, you will learn huge amounts and breaking down your actions that led to you ending up on your ass.

4. Go slow at first, keep it simple and build up your learning. Don’t simply go all out from the start. If you do you will miss most of the lessons from the failure, not seeing it as it happens but only reflecting upon what you can remember after the event.

5. Drill the skills. Repeat, test, reflect, adapt, repeat, test, reflect adapt. Until you build the ‘muscle memory’ you will find it hard to reach a stage of new unconscious competence.

After a short time, just as in the headline picture, you will love the experience, feel the benefit and learn so much more from every time you ‘hit the mat’.

Making Time

Time is, for many, the most challenging element required; however If you can’t make the time, you can’t feasibly expect any more than incremental results. One sales course every 3-6 months is not enough. Deliberate practice often is essential to the highest performing individuals and teams in the world, and they make the time to train, to experiment, to fail and to learn. 

‘Wait!’ I hear some of you cry. ‘We have so much to do and not enough time to do it, as it is. Where am I going to find the time needed?’ Well, something needs to change, though it doesn’t need to be very much. You will need to weigh up the value of a potential 15-25% improvement, over the loss of 5-10% of time required to do the work of controlled and progressive failure. The truth is that there is probably more time you can make available than you realise.

• Explore where you can feasibly build time into what you already do to focus on the failure and learning elements of building your capabilities.

• Look at real-life scenarios as much as you can, and as is responsible for you to do so. Surgeons do not perform ‘whipples’ without lots of practice in skills labs, observation and assisting experienced surgeons while they are developing their basic surgical competency. Rugby players do not perform new set moves without plenty of drilling on the training field under game style pressure. As a result you should look at where the consequences of failure are low in your everyday work, but where the real-life/simulation pressure is real.

• Add in a couple of hours a week to create a safe zone to deliberately practice with support from another, where you can stretch, fail, gain feedback and adapt/test again while it’s still fresh.

After a short time, once confidence begins to build and trust develops, you will learn to love the process of learning from progressive failure. Done well it will be a process which students embrace from beginner to master. It is one we never wish to lose because that is where the real knowledge lies, and where our quest for constant improvement resides.

Good luck and ‘domo arigato gozaimasu’