Make Room for Failure

I’m not going to make any New Year predictions, but I’ve noticed talk of the need for failure popping up everywhere. And I agree. That’s right, you need to fail.

In conversations with other arts & culture professionals, the subject keeps coming up: nonprofits rarely allow themselves the freedom to risk failure, stunting growth and staying mired in old strategies. I’m not saying throw away all your traditional marketing and take up the next trendy Web 2.0 tool, but it’s valuable to set aside a bit of your budget to try something new, or test a new twist on an old method that might be declining in effectiveness. That’s how we learn.

A perfect opportunity would be an event or exhibition you do every year – your Nutcracker, say. Here’s your chance to take a piece of the marketing, tinker with it, make it measurable, and track the results from year to year. It sounds obvious, but how often do you see that done on a consistent basis?

I was talking with an arts and culture professional who has experience working with a large, successful corporation to integrate the arts into its marketing. He praised the company for having the latitude to try innovative, sometimes crazy promotions to find out what works and what doesn’t. They have wild successes but they have their spectacular failures, too. It comes with the territory.

Then today, Neill Archer Roan posted an interesting rumination that included these words of wisdom:

When we do organizational culture work, we repeatedly hear that most people want to work in an organization that values innovation. What's interesting, however, is that most people are unwilling to accept the failure rate that goes along with working in an innovative culture.

Truly innovative organizations fail often, but the best of these innovator organizations have both processes and cultures in place that foster learning from failure. What is learned from failure is precious. How often do we treat this knowledge as if it were precious?

Someone in a recent, face-to-face discussion pointed out that nonprofits have no budget for R&D. Money is tight and staffs are overtaxed, but the world is changing fast, so find a way. What worked even a couple of years ago might not work today, and new ways of communicating and consuming information are being taken up all the time. To not pay attention is just foolish, and to not take risks is riskier than you think.

Have a happy and risky new year.

Comments

[N. Hyde]

Ah, failure. That little finger of fear is clawing at the inside of my belly right now. Will my new project be a success, or will it die on the vine? Regardless, I will push on because ultimately, the oblique benefits are greater than quantifiable success. Thought-provoking site - I'll come back often to read and ruminate.