To Fail or Not to Fail?

Posted by Rich Crowley in management, planning, Project Management, strategy

I’m torn between the essence of two ideas I find very appealing, but seemingly at odds with one another. The first is based on achieving progress using a “fail fast, fail forward” approach and the second involves achieving excellence by “minimizing mistakes”.

The former is more of a philosophy for growth or innovation I suppose.  Try new things, learn as quickly as you can, and understand that there is as much (or more) to be learned in what we mess up as there is in what we do well.  This approach fosters creativity and supports challenges to the status quo.

The latter is closer to the zero defects mantra that several quality movements espouse.  I was first exposed to this notion as a hockey player in my teens. My high school coach, who was an exceptionally good one, was a real stickler for eliminating mistakes. Early in the season, he was more accepting of mistakes as we learned systems and approaches to the game that were built around the strengths and weaknesses of that particular team.  As the season progressed, he wanted our team to grow by committing fewer and fewer mistakes each game. I can remember him summarizing in the dressing room after our games the mistakes we’d made, and their impact.

There is a mental toughness that comes with the success of eliminating mistakes.  In individual sports, like golf, quite often it is the “bad hole” that takes a player out of contention and this is often the result of a mental error on what shot to make, what risk to take vs avoid, etc.  In tennis, there is a popular statistic called “unforced errors” that tallies exactly those types of errors that are self-inflicted.  Team sports are no different – in pro hockey, which has a long play-off season which is often a war of attrition, talent obviously plays a role but quite often the winning side is the one whose talent commit fewer errors and are able to capitalize on those made by the opposition.

I often keep these ideas in mind as I manage projects.  Early on, where things are often a bit more nebulous, I prefer to manage things using the “fail fast, fail forward” mantra.  This has helped me enormously in finding the strengths of the people involved in a given project, and to avoid the trap of following existing processes that may be old, out of date, or simply irrelevant in the context of the job at hand.  This has served me time and again in developing an overall approach that is unique to a given project.

In the later stages, I have  found the “minimizing mistakes” approach often serves the project well to ensure a clean delivery of whatever it is the early stage landed on as the ultimate target / objective.  Solid processes and systems are often a pre-requisite for minimizing mistakes.