Getting Comfortable with Failure—Event Recap: WIN SF x Venmo
We’ve heard loud and clear that the only way to innovate is to take risks, fail forward, and fail fast. And yet, so many of us put pressure on ourselves to be nothing short of perfect from the start. How do we manage this tension between failure and perfectionism? Could it be that failure is actually the key to success?
We believe that failure is a necessary part of progress.
In February, WIN SF partnered with Venmo to host a workshop to teach our community how to embrace and learn from failure in their personal and professional lives. Rachel Hurnyak, SF WIN Ambassador and Strategy Implementor at Venmo, facilitated the workshop and led our team through a number of exercises designed to foster comfort with failure. After years of experience quarterbacking teams at Venmo and Tesla, she, just like the rest of us, has had her fair share of “failure”and has spent time reflecting on how to best grow from her experiences. We’ve shared some of her takeaways below:
Event takeaways:
1. Reframe opportunities or situations that led to, or may lead to, failure
Flip the failure.
Turn your failure into a learning moment. What do I know now that I wouldn’t have otherwise? What did go right?
Be your own coach.
Act like you’re talking to your closest friend or family member. It’s important that you’re kind and patient, but also honest.
Personalize your information processing style.
Think about how you best absorb experiences. Do you process information through writing or through talking aloud? Everyone has their own way of learning, so do what works for you.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Becoming comfortable with failure is a process that takes time and effort. Continue practicing as you have more “failures”.
Find an accountability partner.
Ask a manager, colleague or partner to support you on your journey and to keep you honest with yourself.
2. Learn objectively from failures
Separate feelings from facts.Give yourself a set amount of time to grieve your failure. During this time, write down your unfiltered thoughts in a journal, capturing whatever pops into your head. Then, categorize each thought into either “fact” or “feeling”. Honor the feelings, but recognize that they are subjective and let them go. Move forward with the facts.
Look for data.Take inventory of the information you have. Do you have any data? What data do you need? Try your best to get the data and hard facts you need from a manager or colleagues. This will arm you with what you need to change the conversation from feeling-driven to fact- and data-driven.
3. Diagnose the extent to which your environment fosters failure
Observe what happens when someone or a team fails.
Ask the following questions:
Are facts or feelings used as criteria?
Does the mood shift negative or positive? Do people panic?
Who leads the conversation about next steps? Too many people? Not enough?
Who offers support? What does support look like?
Are there retroactives or post-mortems? Is information documented and learned from?
Does anyone celebrate failures? Are the people who “fail” mocked, silenced, ignored or overridden?
How are “heroes” treated? Are they on a pedestal? Do they burn out?
Recognize that culture is NOT your responsibility.
If the above answers reveal that your company culture is not fail-friendly, please remember that changing a company’s culture is not your job, especially alone. It’s a collective responsibility and leadership must play a key role in the change.
4. Influence others to get comfortable with failure
Create a failure manifesto.
Write a mantra that resonates with you and your team that you can come back to time and time again when you experience failure. This will ground you, and remind you that failure is completely normal, and necessary to make progress.
Be a role model.
Failing is hard for everyone. If you’re able to demonstrate that experiencing failure isn’t the end of the world, others will follow suit.
Have a plan.
Outline an accountability plan before failures happen. Create a system for handling failures and assign roles so that when something does go wrong, confusion is eliminated. Before a failure happens, try to determine what support you need and ask for it so that you can get ahead of any potential problems.
Create accountability.
Build post-mortem into your process from the beginning so that a whole team can learn from the project transparently. At the end of each project, assign owners to action items for what needs to be improved for the future, and figure out what infrastructure needs to be in place for the best chance of success.
Photography: Kara Albe
Writer: Gabby Andrade
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