Celebrate Failure: Productive mindset or Misguided Folly
how to embrace failure at work
As promised last week, let’s explore some of the key applied improv principles - their value and their pitfalls.
A core improv tenet improvisers espouse “celebrate failure”. Here’s why. In theatrical improvisation, improvisers make up scenes, stories and songs - sometimes whole plays - without any script or pre-planning. (This does not mean we don’t practice skills and learn frameworks, but the whole point of improv is to be making it up on the spot.) As you might expect, this means that unpredictable things will happen. Improvisers must learn to embrace “mistakes” as gifts, and go with the flow even if the scene isn’t going the way they thought it would. So, improvisers practice their failure tolerance, often by engaging in games that will guarantee mistakes and then taking big bows and getting cheers when they do in fact fail.
How Business Adopted the Failure Mindset
When applied improvisation first came on the scene in the 1990’s (see last week’s post for a brief history of the field), the idea that mistakes should be embraced or failure tolerated was hearsay in a professional work environment. Most cultures were designed to limit and punish failure in any way possible. So, introducing folks to this principle was a revelation. Organizations found value in applying this concept to increase creative problem-solving skills, psychological safety, and what Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset.” A willingness to embrace failure meant folks were more willing to experiment, break out of their habitual comfort zones, and admit when they were stuck.
From surgeons to steel company executives to attorneys to non-profit boards, the recognition of how embracing- rather than shrinking from - failure could support growth and accomplishment soared. In the tech industry the concept was elevated to a core mantra - move fast and break things, said Facebook. Google created a whole division to try impossible projects and gave teams bonuses when they voluntarily shut down their attempts. NASA realized that their “failure is not an option” policy limited their ability to innovate, and distinguished when and how failure could tolerably be part of the process.
The Problem With Taking It Too Far
And, of course it’s more complicated than that. Even on an improv stage, the GOAL isn’t to fail - it’s to release unhelpful judgment and shame in order to experiment and create. The problem with failure is not that we don’t do it enough, but that when we do it, we tend to freeze, collapse in on ourselves, or deny, justify, hide. Understanding that failure is part of learning and growth allows us to take creative risks. Ultimately, though, we want to succeed. The surgeon, as one senior physician said to my colleague @simo, must be willing to risk failure or they wouldn’t have the courage to make the cut. But we don’t want them cavalierly leaving sponges inside patients. Even in learning environments, mistakes are embraced on a path to acquiring skills and knowledge that can be effectively used.
In recent years, folks like Carol Dweck and Amy Edmondson (The Right Kind of Failure) have written on failure in more nuanced ways, distinguishing types of mistakes and when and how we can/should see them as useful, inevitable or blameworthy. Paul Kirschner recently posted here about the research on failure in learning environments, and the dangers (ie failures) of this mindset in instructional design.
Finding the Right Balance
So, what is the bottomline? The ability to tolerate failure, rather than be terrified of it, or pretend that it isn’t an inevitable part of most developmental and creative process, can be very useful. We are able to try new things, explore our assumptions and habits, and create environments that support motivation and innovation. However, even on an improv stage, we are disingenuous to say that results and consequences don’t matter, and that excellence, safety and achievement are not important.
Where do you feel like you might expand your tolerance for mistakes? Where might you hold yourself accountable to higher standards of success?
Next up: "Yes, And" - Beyond Agreement
In case you missed it: The History of Applied Improvisation