I’m so over the term “fail fast”
I get it. There’s a bunch behind “fail fast” that is useful. We’ll get to that in a moment. But first…
Ahh! This might win my vote for worst buzz word.
Here’s what I hate about it. No one I know wants to fail. The idea of failing fast doesn’t make it more enticing. Even if you get rewarded for failure, it’s just not in our DNA. It certainly isn’t natural for the driven and successful people I work with.
The worst part is that failure isn’t the goal!
If suddenly everyone was willing to go for it and start failing fast, that doesn’t guarantee anything, except for more failure.
Rant over.
To be clear, it isn’t that I don’t see value in the concept. Quite the opposite. I worry that the phrase makes people miss the point. The point that done is better than perfect. That more time won’t give you the answers that you can’t possibly know before trying.
To do big innovative things, by definition you have to do new things. New, meaning you don’t know how to do it. It’s extremely unlikely that you will do truly new, big things, and get it all right on the first try. Most likely you will get a lot wrong. Getting something wrong doesn’t usually mean give up. It usually means you try something, it fails, you learn why, and you try something new.
This concept isn’t new. It wasn’t new in the era of build-measure-learn and the many other buzzwords. Usually these buzzwords don’t cause a big problem. But in this case it causes some weird problems.
- Skip the thinking part. This permission to fail gives some people the idea that they don’t have to have an informed approach. No. Try to be right. Just know that you won’t always be.
- People fixate on the failure and game the system. I’ve seen artificial (expected failures) tried. Again, no. Sometimes there are things worth trying even though it isn’t logical, but just to get failure points is so broken.
- Cognitive dissonance stalls the system. Even if someone logically get’s that it’s a good thing, if they still emotionally struggle with failure. For example if they are afraid of failing, it cripples their abilities.
Failure is just too loaded of a term for a lot of people. I’ve worked with many to get past the drama and fear, but why would managers intentionally use a word that so many struggle with? We’ll, luckily it doesn’t actually matter. If you struggle with it, there’s an easy trick. When you inevitably hear someone tell you to “fail fast,” just translate it in your head to “learn and evolve quickly.”
Isn’t that really the goal? It’s all about learning. It’s about moving forward without knowing the answer. It’s about putting yourself out there. It’s about having massive ambition and being willing to persevere through all sorts of things, including failure. One of my favorite quotes gets the essence of the real goal:
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” –Thomas Carlyle
Whether you magically get everything right, you can still learn and continually improve. And if something you try doesn’t work, how you label that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you learn the right things and continue to take action until you find what works.
