Innovation does not come without discarding ideas, trying and failing. In complex systems with complex challenges, failure is inevitable and desired. If we need to prototype to sense our way forward we have to have a mindset that can handle failure.
On Saturday at the Art of Participatory Leadership in Petaluma my new friend Shawn Berry convened a session on failure and through listening to stories ranging from small prototoyping failures to business breakdowns and even deaths, I noted a few patterns that are helpful for groups and people to address failure positively nd resourcefully
Frame it up. In North America and Europe we have a cultural aversion to failure. Failure is equated with inadequacy. Our self-esteem is tied to our success. Our compensation and status is affected by failure. Fear of failure is prevalent in the culture. In order to combat this tendency, it is helpful to work with a group to get them acquainted to failing. For more playful groups improv exercises can be an excellent way to drop inhibitions to try something and fail. More rational groups might benefit from a little appreciative inquiry where participants recall positive failing experiences. Reflecting and sharing on times of failure and survival reminds us that it is part of the process.
Support the experience. While groups are experimenting and learning, succeeding and failing it helps to have support and coaching present in the process. Depending on the kind of work being done you can offer support to keep a group resilient and unattached. I have used several different kinds of processes here including the following:
- Simply pausing for reflection periodically in the process to notice what is going on. Slowing the process down helps to gain valuable perspective on what is happening and helps a group move on quickly from failure.
- allowing failure to occur and then taking the subsequent stressful thoughts to an inquiry process using The Work of Byron Katie. We do this often when working with groups in the non-profit sector for example, where the pressure to succeed is accompanied by feelings of fear of the results of failing.
- In indigenous and other colonized cultural settings I have often had Elders and healers present who can care for the more invisible dynamics in the field, especially when our work is going to carry us into some of the sources of trauma. When you are working in a place where people are operating out of deep historical trauma, the fear of failure can be laden with many many deep seated implications. Having people in the process who understand these dynamics is essential.
- Peer-coaching is a common way to build resilience in groups where trying and failing is important. When a team is trying to learn something new it helps to also build the capacity for them to be able to rely on each other. This is why so many teams value “cross-training.” When athletes train, they often work out in ways that are not related to their sport _ a skier training by rowing for example. Doing this helps them to learn to use their body differently and builds strength that supports their core work. Similarly, work teams can learn a lot about themselves by creating situations of safe failure such as through improvisational exercises, outdoor experiences, games and other non-work focuses. The skills learned there can help support the team when they knuckle down to focus on key tasks and can support constructive failure within the work domain. Ultimately these skills will build capacity if they increase the ability of the group to support itself through stressful times.
- Developing a practice of greeting failure with joy. My friend Khelsilem Rivers taught me this one. He is – among other things – an indigenous language teacher and using the tool kit “Where Are Your Keys” Khelsilem helps people become fluent in their indigenous languages. One of the barriers to rapid fluency is a fear of “not doing it right.” Khelsilem completely transforms the experience of failure by introducing the technique called “How Fascinating!” When a person (including the facilitator) makes a mistake, the whole group celebrates by throwing their hands in the air, leaning back and declaring “How Fascinating!” While it might seem contrived at first, the technique opens up the body, and greets the failure with a collective celebration. Blame and judgement is avoided, collective support is activated and learning is grounded.
Practices like these are essential to build into the architecture of processes where failure is inevitable if innovation is to occur.
Process the grief. When catastrophic failure occurs it can leave people grieving, frightened and cynical. If there is no way to process the grief then individuals often build their next prototype out of fear. If you feel you have been burned before, you might develop your next idea by building in protection against failing again. While that can seem prudent and safe, in reality, building structures out of fear is a much riskier proposition than building structures out of possibility. Without processing grief, a group or a person can be susceptible to being “defended.” I learned much about this state from Dr. Gordon Neufeld who is a child psychologist who has described this phenomenon in children. Taking a group or a person through the grief cycle using empathy, story telling and compassion can help free the emotions that are triggered in future learning experiences.
Building a mindset to embrace failure and support the transformation of the energy of failure is critical to groups developing the capacity to lead in complexity.
I’ve also written about failure here:
In a complex and interconnected world it is hard to be an activist against things. One of the easiest ways that your opponents can neutralize your opposition to things like oil and slavery is to say “we” you depend on oil and slaves, so that makes you a hypocrite.”
So this is tricky – solving global problems of labour, energy, economics and justice are the very definition of complex problems. There is no simple solution, there is a frustrating degree of progress and even large shifts in public consciousness (think land mines or climate change) are met with initial enthusiasm but later are eroded by commercial or power interests that have a stake in the status quo and way more influence than activists.
So what to do?
Consider the slavery question. All of us in North America depend on slave labour to support our lifestyles. As with the issues of oil dependance, our very existence creates an impact that is measurable, real and negative against our social justice agenda. Affordability usually is usually the result of slave labour. Real slave labour.
So how does one deal with this?
First it’s important to remember that you are part of the problem. To quote Adam Kahane:
Bill Torbert of Boston College once said to me that the 1960s slogan “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” actually misses the most important point about effecting change. The slogan should be, “If you’re not part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution.” If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then logically we have no basis at all, zero leverage, for change the way things are — except from the outside, by persuasion or force.
The good news and bad news is that it is impossible to influence change from outside the problem. Such self-righteousness is easily dismissed. In addition, it is very difficult to advocate an end to slavery while at the same time not being prepared to pay a lot more for your food and clothes. Change must be made from within the problem. And to do that you have to work with others who are part of the problem.
In general for large scale global neo-liberal problems, there are three players: governments, capital and markets. All three of these create the conditions for problems and leverage is needed on all three to create the conditions for solutions, especially at the level of transformative change. Consumers demand cheap products, capital creates the flow of materials to meet the need and governments regulate to ensure that things happen (usually for those who have the best ability to keep governments in office). The hardest of these to change is the market because market behaviour is completely emergent. Think of the last time you saw a damaging industry collapse because the market changed overnight. IN general shifts in demand are prompted by better products in the market – things that will help people do things in a better way, at a competitive price. There is no question that there is a demand to end slavery, but the demand for cheap clothes outweighs it.
Markets can be influenced by capital and government. Capital influences markets by controlling what is offered out there. If you have billions of dollars, you can do things like buy up your cometeitors patents for clean energy for example, or in the case of companies like Wal-Mart, use you economy of scale to provide loss leader products that bring people into your store to buy cheap things at the expense of local manufacturing. And if you are in government you can regulate to eliminate bad things in the market, such as slavery as a labour practice. But if you also sign international agreements that allow the free flow of capital, you box yourself in to accepting slavery as a practice because capital will always seek the lowest expense climate.
So to affect change requires an engagement of all three. It begins with a personal practice and commitment to a trajectory of social and economic justice. It requires that personally I commit to “better.” Will we ever have a world where slavery is abolished? No. Can I live my life without any dependance on slaves? Doubtful, and certainly if I was to live that life I would be far from the ability to influence power in anyway.
So it is commitment to a trajectory rather than a finish line. Complex problems are not “solvable.” You have to get good with living with this uncertainty and get good at accepting the gift and the curse of emergence.
Second, people have to affect change with powerful narratives. Governments have coercive power and large corporations have the power of manipulation using capital. All people have are narrative power – the power of a better story. Almost always this story “fails” against the coercive power of force and capital – think Occupy, Arab Spring, Idle No More and so on. But while they failed to achieve their specific goals, these kinds of movement are very important. It is important that citizens try and try again to advance the narrative of justice. Because from time to time these narrative movements succeed. Think gains like gay marriage and civil rights in North America. Think about what happened in places like Estonia, Czechoslovakia and India and South Africa. When the narrative wins, that one time in 1000, things transform.
And it would be nice to know that any intervention we choose will have the system changing effect that we want, but we can’t have that certainty. We need to work towards change from inside the place of the problem.
So, what is your experience in affecting change from inside the problem? How do you work towards justice while recognizing your complicity in the very problems you are addressing? How does a complexity-based world view and skill set enable good work to happen?
We have opened our Art of Hosting at Rivendell, on Bowen Island. These words are in my ear, words spoken by Elrond at his Council at the mythical Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring. The council was deliberating on who should carry out the quest to destroy the One Ring, and so end the world and nrid it of the domination of the evil Sauron. The question of the humble hobbits ndoing the work came up and this was Elrond’s response:
“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere”
Come, hobbits. The time for work is here.
Halfway through our five day residency with leaders from the community sector and the Ministry for Children and Families here in BC. Times like this, at middle of a five day retreat, we turn our thoughts to what comes next and we forget to be present. This is our day of practicing presence however, and later today we will be going out on the land and allow ourselves to be hosted by the forest, the rain and our island. This is the time for a fierce recommitment to the here and now.
My colleague and friend Annemarie Travers, who is on our hosting team and who leads learning in the Ministry shared a beautiful framing for our day together. She and her husband Geoff recently completed the Camino pilgrimage and she wrote dozens of poems during her journey. This morning she shared one that speaks powerfully to what it is like to be distracted by the near end:
Staying “Here”
The closer we get to the end of our walk, the harder it is to stay present
We think ahead to achieving our goal, beginning to be proud of our accomplishmentWe have also started to think about home, and all that waits for us there
But we need to focus on enjoying these last few days as much as we dareWhile we feel the Camino has given us both what we need
We know it’s not done with us yet, their is still more to come, indeed!These last few days are characterized by more traffic on the paths
And as we weave our way through, some draw our wrathThen we remind ourselves of the Camino spirit, and breathe deeply, just let it go
(Hopefully not while passing a farm – we are regularly assaulted by manure smells you know)We forget to be grateful for the simple pleasures of the day
It was supposed to rain today, but the rain stayed away!This all has the effect of limiting our opportunities for meditative walking
Our minds go to the usual worries, and we begin talkingAbout the end of the trip, and what we will do when we return
So we made a pact with ourselves with the intent to turnThe train of our thoughts, to focus on the here and now
Enjoy what this day brings, not the manure, but the beauty of the cow…
Such a beautiful reminder to remain present, to enjoy the source of everything that continues to work with us!
…is the best wisdom for yourself:
The advice you’ve been giving your family and friends turns out to be advice for you to live, not us. You become the wise teacher as you become a student of yourself. It stops mattering if anyone else hears you, because you’re listening. You are the wisdom you offer us, breathing and walking and effortlessly moving on, as you make your business deal, buy your groceries, or do the dishes.
— Byron Katie
Loving being with my partner Caitlin Frost as she teaches this powerful stuff to a group of leaders whose freedom and resourcefulness makes a huge difference in the lives of vulnerable humans in this world.