Don’t fail fast. Fail uncomfortably, painfully, slow.
Fail fast – the mantra popularized from the Silicon Valley startup world – is about the faster you fail, the faster you can reach some level of success. While it is true that new and different attempts at something is a factor in your success, from what I have seen in companies of all sizes and in all parts of the world, is that the fail fast approach is apt to skip over mistakes and leave learnings on the table that are an even greater factor contributing to your ultimate growth (as a company and as a person).
I was coaching the head of sales from one of California’s latest promising startups. They’ve raised millions, have attracted top level talent and signed big name clients. We were looking at last month’s sales and we started with the question I almost always start with:
What was your commitment AND what actually happened?
If you’re like most, you get past that accountability section as quickly as possible or skip over it entirely. Whether we’re talking sales or anything else. If you missed the goal, you chalk up a quick failure and get to convincing yourself why it will be different next time.
That’s exactly what this sales leader did. He gave me the two numbers, noted a double-digit percentage shortfall, and quickly transitioned to why this coming month was going to be better and how they were already ahead of target. That’s pretty representative of fail fast culture — whether we’re talking product development, company growth or sales. Glance at the miss (if at all), quickly explain it away and move on to the next thing.
This is where the discomfort comes in and maybe even the pain. Slow down. Slow way down and actually acknowledge the failure. Start to ask questions probing what went wrong… Why did it go wrong? What can you learn from it? External circumstances might need to be noted, but what did you do that contributed to the miss? Sit in the discomfort of the failure and see what might be there.
Ironically enough, when diving into the failure with this sales leader, what he discovered was that it was exactly because they weren’t slowing down and learning from their failures, growing from their mistakes that they were missing their targets. They were failing too quickly to get anything from the failure itself. But it took courage to slow down, sit with the failure and actually look at what it was showing them.
It doesn’t take anything to come up with excuses, blame or circumstances. I’d venture a guess that those are the first things that come to mind for many. It takes something to slow down and hold up a mirror to our own shortcomings. To poke around those areas that are just as easily skipped over. But that’s exactly what growth takes. And the more we do it, the better we get at it. As individuals and as companies.
If you haven’t purchased your copy of Hunting Discomfort yet, let me invite you to dive in.
We take a look at the 5 major discomforts that you might be avoiding (failure is of course a piece of it) and share the anecdotes to actually grow from them. Just as this sales leader discovered, it’s those that dive into the discomfort that ultimately are free of it and enjoy all the results on the other side.
To be clear, failure is a necessary aspect of growth. But just skimming over the top of it because it doesn’t feel good will likely only leave you with more failures. Don’t fall into that trap. Take your time to learn from the misses. Grow from the missteps and even feel the pain of what you may have personally contributed to not hitting the goal. If you’re willing to fail uncomfortably, painfully slow, there are real and meaningful results on the other side.
I’ll see you there, #NoMatterWhat.