Keep Sucking Until You SUCceed
What do you think of when you hear the word “success?” Maybe you think of a goal to reach. Or perhaps you think of striving for perfection. Or even yet, maybe you think of an elusive character trait of mentors or heroes. Perhaps you think about what the supposed opposite of success is: failure. But is failure really the opposite of success, or is it just a pitstop on the path to the top of the mountain, so to speak?
The truth is, we often equate failure with shameful or bad words—something we don’t want to talk about or admit. But when we fall into these habits of sweeping our mistakes under the rug, we miss out on the opportunity that comes from mistakes. We miss out on what a growth mindset can afford all of us. After all, we all start as beginners. The only way to get better is to practice—to keep sucking until you succeed.
Let’s dive into why mistakes are crucial and how to develop a culture that values failure and growth.
Why Mistakes Are Important
It’s not a stretch to say that mistakes and failures are the foundation of learning, innovation, and growth. In fact, the psychology of mistakes makes it pretty clear that our most instructive, foundational growth and development comes from these so-called failures—as long as we have the time and capacity to reflect on our mistakes, learn how to fix them, and take away something informative. Here are just a couple of the many benefits of mistakes.
Mistakes Help Us Learn and Grow
Over the years, numerous studies have proven the importance of mistakes and failure in learning. For example, in her 2017 article, “Learning From Errors,” psychologist Janet Metcalfe found that “errorful learning” followed up with corrective feedback is beneficial to students… encouraging active exploration and engagement with the new material. And while this study looks specifically at U.S. schoolchildren, it can provide meaning for adults in the workplace, too.
When a mistake happens at work, too often we seize up, riddled with anxiety about the issue or about what the perceived failure says about us as individuals. But what if we assessed mistakes with a growth mindset instead? Rather than being fearful, we could examine the situation and take away valuable lessons. For example, learning from mistakes at work might look like discovering how to better plan for the unexpected, becoming more detail-oriented, developing resiliency, or finding an outside-the-box solution for a problem. In other words, mistakes make you better if you let them.
Mistakes Can Lead to Innovation
We’ve all heard the stories of products or people who have come out stronger after a significant failure. Steve Jobs was more or less kicked out of Apple, only to become synonymous with the brand itself years later. The medicine we now know as Penicillin was discovered because a Scottish researcher, Sir Alexander Flemming, went on a two-week vacation. When he returned, he noticed that a mold had developed on a contaminated staphylococcus culture plate and that the mold prevented the growth of staphylococci.
While these may seem like exceptions to the rule, the truth is that innovation is all around us. Taking our mistakes in stride, reexamining what happened, and charting a new path forward can help us develop better and more innovative outcomes.
Developing a Culture of Failure
So how do you develop a workplace culture that accepts that failure and mistakes happen and that they’re learning opportunities? Or, at the very least, how do you create a culture that doesn’t punish employees for making honest mistakes? It all starts with the leadership team. Leaders and managers can use these tips to develop a culture that lets employees know that the definitive answer to “Is it ok to make mistakes at my job?” is yes.
Lead by Example: Organizations that lead by example have leaders who illustrate what making a mistake and successfully recovering from it looks like. They try new things. They own up to mistakes, and they talk about what they learned from them. And then they course-correct and try something else. You might be surprised by what comes out of the problem-solving that results from a misstep.
Identify the Root Cause: Up until this point, we’ve been using the terms “failure” and “mistake” somewhat interchangeably. But, there’s a big difference between a mistake or error that was caused by neglect or sloppy performance and one that came out of trial and error, experimentation, or a lack of knowledge. While the first may signify a larger issue, the second is an opportunity for growth and learning. A culture that accepts failure doesn’t accept any and all mistakes. It understands the nuances.
Encourage Honesty and Transparency: By promoting honesty and transparency, employees can feel empowered to share their mistakes or errors in a safe, productive way. Not only does this discourage any hiding of mistakes, but it also sets a precedent that failures—and learning from them—are an important part of the process. Teams can also put guardrails in place so employees who make an error understand who to tell, how to reflect on it, and how to move forward.
Implement “Fast” Failure: It’s one thing to fail quickly. It’s another beast entirely to fail over the long term. Companies need to understand the difference and implement strategies for fast failure. For example, build out systems and processes for prototyping or outlining. That way, when something inevitably fails at some point, fewer resources are spent and a new solution can be developed more quickly. The real value of making mistakes here is that you find out quickly what works and what doesn’t.
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