When Did We Become So Afraid of Failure?
The web industry is built on a foundation of trial and error; many of the successes on the web come from the failures before it. This industry is so quick to throw its success to the public but so fearful to do the same for its failures. I question why, especially in an industry where our failures are so fundamentally important to our success.
I called out Google and Carsonified in my previous article, “Employees First, Profit Second.”, primarily because of their desire to flaunt their radical work cultures in front of the community during good economic times and their inability to hide from that same culture during the over abundance of layoffs that plague both organizations. They were honest with us when their model worked, they shared that with us in an effort to help us all think and work better. Where is that same sharing for the methodologies that failed these organization, where sharing such failures could prove more beneficial for us as a community. Think about cooking, it isn’t just knowing what ingredients go well together, it is equally knowing which ingredients don’t go well together – knowing both is a recipe for success.
I don’t think it is just these organizations that are afraid of failure; I think some of us are afraid to hear about failure, especially if and when it comes from the organizations we look up to most. I am damn bewildered that the industry has really decided not to talk about the WordPress 2.5 redesign, one that was almost immediately altered and then just as quickly replaced. Aesthetics and terms like “good” and “bad” are often very subjective – however, the truth is that the majority of the WordPress community did not like the 2.5 design and that was apparent through the quick changes to it and then its ultimate complete removal. Some people loved the new design, some just preferred it over the version that came before it – but it didn’t survive; why? There was a lot of buzz surrounding its release which continued up until a weeks after that release. Then people started using it and then it disappeared, why? Designers who love designers and support each other’s designs were so quick to say it was great, but when it was deemed not so great, everyone just stopped talking about it in general, why? Some may even say I am being too presumptuous, that I don’t know the real story and that I shouldn’t speak to that which I don’t know about; I say you are right! This is the issue, we don’t know the true story and are now more likely to be destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Was the design flawed? Was the information architecture flawed? Was the user research or the conclusions of that research flawed? Was the design intention not in sync with the design execution; did the failure come at development or integration or deployment? Was this a classic example of a design done pro-bono or on a tight budget where the strain of such a relationship had an obvious impact on the end execution? Why was 2.5 so praised and then quickly removed? Admittedly, I am actually afraid myself to say who I heard designed 2.5 and to even begin to suggest that they could fail – because I hold that organization up on such a high pedestal.
I don’t advocate that we all go out and start flaunting our failures; obviously no one likes to admit when they are wrong and it is a bit demoralizing when you’ve failed. It is even worse when you feel as though you’ve succeeded but the economy, clients or public opinion are telling you otherwise. But it becomes a social responsibility for those organizations who capitalize on being in the public eye. We all share in this community, but some of us are fortunate enough to profit from that sharing within the community. When you profit from flaunting your successes to us all; it does become more important for you to share your failures as well, even if it hurts your bottom-line. You don’t realize it, but you set the bar for what is “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong” – so when you go bad or go wrong and don’t talk about it; many of us unfortunately follow and thus repeat your failure.
I fail and write about it occasionally. But I am also not really in the public eye; I don’t write books, speak at or hold conferences that actually change thoughts and shape companies and even evolve entire industries. I don’t have that same responsibility, that same influence. At nclud we perform something for our clients called a “competitive market analysis” – there is a lot that goes into it, but one of the core components to this exercise is to look at competitors in the space and evaluate their strengths and weakness. To ensure that our clients can capitalize on everything done well and can avoid everything that fails – and to understand why these elements succeed and failed. Again, great recipes for success come from knowing what ingredients work together as well as knowing which don’t.
I think Ryan Carson at Carsonified had a great post yesterday, “When you fail, it’s time to try again”. My article is really inspired by that; I want to selfishly believe my previous article had something to do with his writing of this post – maybe I do have some influence after all (doubtful)? Carson gets honest about his failures and even puts himself up for public criticism for some radical thoughts on moving forward. I think his ideas are great and my take away from his candid remarks will help me greatly. Ryan has a reputation for success, so when he says he does something, we all take notice; we might not all listen or agree, but we take notice. I highly respect Ryan for sharing his thoughts on failing and helping us all avoid his lessons learned.
We love the word “transparency” when it makes us look good. I admit, I love to play the spin game and make a bad situation look good; that is more trying to have a positive outlook on things that it is about hiding from the truth. I am young enough and this industry is young enough that it is okay for us to fail. “Failure” doesn’t have to be this dark and dirty word to hide from. Look at how the team at jQuery and nGenWorks handled the situation regarding the “JavaScript Rockstar”. Sure the concept “failed”, but that doesn’t mean it was bad; the concept was beautiful, just not appropriate. By talking about what happened and not hiding from it; we all become better. We all actually got a great lesson in how to better listen to our constituents and react accordingly. They handled it with respect, class and transparency and we are all better because of it.
Don’t be afraid to fail and don’t be afraid of your failures. Failures can often be the foundation for success.
- December 18th, 2008
- 15comments
- I am a proud member of the 9rules network
Hey Martin,
Thanks for the support - been interesting to see how people react to my blog post.
I think you’re right - people don’t like to hear about failure, but it’s *so* important to succeeding. Plus, if you never fail, what fun is success?
Side note: It’s really hard to find who the author of the blog posts are here. I know, but I fear a new visitor could read your blog and have no idea who ‘Martin Ringlein’ is.
Best,
Ryan
Martin,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. People are afraid of failure because they look at failure as a result, rather than a step in a process. In reality, we are constantly “failing” at a small scale; this is why there are design iterations, code reviews and spell checkers. These are the acceptable forms of failure that the creative process accommodates to such a degree that it is even difficult to acknowledge these acts as failures.
That reveals the flip side of the coin: failure is learning. Through failure, we produce something better in the next go-round. There should be no shame in failure, because without failure (learning) there is no growth, no change. Experimentation is vital to our industry. One could even make the argument that it IS our industry. Bruce Mau, quoting Andy Grove, says make mistakes faster.
As an aside, wasn’t it Happy Cog that did the 2.5 design for WP?
I”ve spoken about this in the past. Why do doctors and lawyers to get “practice” medicine and law but the rest of us have to get it perfectly every time? I call that BS. Business is about learning from your mistakes and continuously improving the process of doing business. Whatever it is we do, we should share what works and what doesn’t in equal light. Not sure internally with your employees, but with colleagues and customers across the board. The sooner we all can stop being so afraid of failing, the sooner we can all reach successes. Suck it up, and share what works and what doesn’t. Just like individuals that can look at their mistakes, seek to improve them… It’s a show of strength and confidence of an organization that can admit to its failures and address them quickly with new applied improvements and direction.
Good post.
Ryan, thanks for the comment! I appreciate your post a lot and have and will continue to look to you and Carsonified as a leading example.
Thanks for the side note; my homepage answers the “who am I” question well, but I have some work to do on these interiors. My damn blog is a failure! J/K … like everyone else I am waiting to launch my redesign before doing anything about it — so lazy.
Steve and Ernesto,
Thanks for the comments as well. I think you are both right on — it is all about learning. And Steve, I cannot confirm nor deny who did the WordPress 2.5 design (too scared).
I don’t want to ever fail or have any one else fail. But, I do enjoy learning about past experiences and applying the lessons learned to my future endeavors.
Nice write-up, Martin.
I think this quote fits this post well:
“Engineers build on their mistakes. Doctors bury their mistakes. Lawyers hang their mistakes. Journalists and now Web Designers put theirs on the front page.”
You say that you’re more than welcome to write and share your mistakes. Have you written about any of your’s or nclud’s in the past? If so, do you have any links?
Ryan,
I think it is important to remember that I am not saying mistakes are good. I am saying that learning from mistakes are good. If a Doctor kills a patient, isn’t it important for other Doctors to know why it happened to avoid it in the future? To save more lives from the one that was lost?
I don’t feel like you read the entire post (sorry if you did), because this is not about people owning up to their own mistakes, it is about other people learning from the mistakes of others. And the only way we can do that is if we are all together not afraid of failure, that is the fundamental point.
I also address in the post the difference between you and I sharing our mistakes and this “industry leaders” sharing theirs; and their responsibility to do so. You want me to share my mistakes because you think it is fair, not because you think it will be helpful to your professional development.
I do share my and nclud’s mistakes; granted I don’t write about every single little thing that goes wrong (and things often go wrong), but I share when I feel it can be helpful. When my lesson learned can help others — I don’t share my mistakes in some effort to release stress or feel better about myself. I gave a presentation (and wrote about it in this blog and nclud’s) about “getting serious with freelancing”. A good majority of that presentation was about avoiding mistakes I had made. I talk about looking dumb in front of clients, sending that email accidentally, about accepting credit card payments and being burned. I talk about fights and tension between my business partner and myself. I talk about these failures of my own, how I came back from them and how to move on and grow from them as well.
I talked very openly about my time at The Motley Fool and what I learned from that experience. It took a terrible situation and became the foundation for an amazing part of my life.
Again, you asking me to point out my own flaws and failures in an effort to be “fair” isn’t the point of the article. Don’t look at it that way. It is about learning!
Great article regarding one of the prime ‘truths’ of human existance.
Failure is experience - the most valuable kind. Failures should be embraced and digested thoroughly, because they contain extremely valuable lessons and data.
Americans always seem run away from their failures in shame. The true shame is to never have had the guts to try something, knowing failure is a very real possibility.
The people who don’t attempt to strike out on their own paths, always opting for the safest route, are the real failures. Cowards, even.
America became great because of people who dared to fail, usually doing so repeatedly before getting it right.
While we still have a lot of folks willing to take those risks, it seems that more and more, all I meet are folks clinging to the safest harbor, always looking for a ’sure thing’.
The only ’sure thing’ in life is death.
Great point! “Failure is experience”. I totally agree, experience isn’t always failure, but if you know how to better yourself, you should be turning your failures into experiences. It is all about lessons learned.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my response. I included that quote just because your post reminded me of it.
And I don’t want you to include your mistakes to be fair, either. I agree that we all learn a whole lot from our mistakes and the only reason I asked for you to share yours was because I think others in the community could learn from them.
I know you’re fair and I’m not saying that you’re acting unfairly.
Sorry that my question came across that way, but it’s not what I meant. I am genuinely curious to past articles where you have written about your mistakes, learned from them, and then tried to instruct the community so they do not make the same ones.
So no, I don’t want you to share your mistakes because I think it will be fair. I was asking you to share some links to previous writing because I am genuinely interested in learning what hasn’t worked in the past so I can avoid some of the same problems in my development.
Ryan,
Thanks for clarifying, I think I got a little defensive (is that a failure?). Great question though, I think that deserves a post in itself, I am going to work on this.
In the mean time, you might be interested in this little rant I posted back in June, “Why I love my mistakes“.
“There are no losers. Just people who didn’t win.”
Sounds all new-agey and optimistic, doesn’t it? What it really means is that winners win and losers win and there’s never any failure to learn from, never any experience that makes you take a step back and say “wow, I was totally wrong and need to rethink this.”
Always winning stifles the need to improve and come up with a better way.
Reminds me of some new-agey stuff. I remember, “You can’t know fearlessness without knowing fear” or “You can’t know Good without knowing Evil” … so, maybe we can say, “You can’t know success without knowing failure”?
I haven’t had many chances to make many mistakes, but when I do, my father always tells me: “If this is the biggest mistake you ever make, you’re in good shape.”
Growing up, people always told me that they were afraid to use the computer because they thought they would push the wrong button and break it; they would then followup by asking how I became so good at them. I told everyone the same thing: go around clicking every button; when you hit the wrong one, and the computer breaks, you know not to it again.
The second you are afraid of messing up, or making a mistake, your chances for greater success have diminished.
Thanks Mike, great point. I think by clicking around, breaking and learning is how I learned Photoshop and XHTML/CSS too.