What are you willing to do to fail?

A key life lesson that I learned during my two years in Indicorps was that of how to fail in life. More precisely, on how to fail, and how to get right back up.

This learning was cemented during our final workshop in Indicorps, where we serendipitously had a session based on JK Rowling's Harvard Commencement address entitled 'The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination'. If I hadn't realized it earlier (its really hard to think about the joys of failure while you are actually failing), this address definitely drilled it home.

Today, I came across an article on Ashoka's Tech blog entitled 'When is failure just an answer to a different question?' It takes a different take on failure - about how we're NOT really wired to "recognize good things in unexpected results", based on research on failures in scientific research.

It also lays out key lessons on How To Learn From Failure:

1. Check your assumptions. Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.
2. Seek out the ignorant. Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.
3. Encourage diversity. If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.
4. Beware of failure-blindness. It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it."

One thing I would add to the start of the list: (0.)Recognize, accept and cope with failure. Failing is an emotional stressful time, and you need to step out of self-doubt and stay positive. I know that during my two years (and multiple failures), I wouldn't have kept going without the support of Preeti and Radhika. So yah, find people to help support you through the failure. You WILL get by with a little help from your friends. And then hopefully you'll learn a lot.

There is one obvious question that presents itself, and which Roopal, the executive director of Indicorps, put very well during that session at our closing workshop. If failure is so great, then are we actively trying to put ourselves in situations where we're more likely to fail? It's a tough question, and a tougher thing to do. Good management practices teach us to plan ahead and choose the path of most probable success. To identify risks and how we will mitigate them. To keep our goals SMART (R for realistic).

Life has taught me to learn from failure, and that its a good thing. However, I don't know if I have ever proactively tried to fail - we thought every one of those 20 odd ventures we started would succeed.

Your thoughts?