How to succeed at failing

It’s great when you try something new and it works out—success! Unfortunately, that does not always happen. But in fact, it really shouldn’t. If everything you do always works, you are not stretching yourself and your ideas enough, exploring new avenues, or creating ambitious goals. The only way to grow is to try new and unknown things. And sometimes that means you fail.

A productive failure is one where you learn something, allowing you to move forward in a new direction, even though it may not be what you thought it was going to be. For example, 3M’s search for an ultrastrong adhesive failed, but instead it got Post-it notes. Not every failure is going to be as successful as Post-it notes, but you can learn and grow from each one.

Admit you failed. The first step is to realize and admit that you failed to achieve your goal. It is often tempting to continue trying, throwing additional resources at the issue in the hopes that it will eventually miraculously succeed. But at some point, you have to admit that you are not going to get the result you are hoping for, so you must close the project, stop spending more time and effort, and move on.

Do damage control. The next step is to determine the consequences of this failure so that you can mitigate them for as many people as possible. Who was the intended customer or audience for your results, and how can you provide something as close as possible to meet their needs? Depending on the severity of the issue, damage control may mean simply extending a deadline or supplying an alternative product. Sometimes it might mean shutting down a production line or pilot plant. Who was affected, and how can you make them whole?

Figure out why. In an exit review, sometimes called a postmortem analysis, you and your team need to analyze the project and determine why it failed. Was the original scope too big? Were the allocated resources too small? Did the team not have the required expertise? Was the technology not up to the task? Was it a planned experiment with only a small chance of succeeding, or the result of inattention to detail or lack of training? Were there communication issues or personality conflicts among team members? Make sure to solicit honest feedback from everyone on the team, as well as the intended customer and others who were affected, to determine the root cause.

Try, try again. The good news is that you now know at least one way that will not work. If you have clearly identified a small number of issues that caused the failure, you can decide whether it’s worth trying again with those issues addressed. Can you try on a smaller scale? Can you set up a simulator or some kind of safe environment in which to try things out, where failure will not be catastrophic? If you still want to achieve the original goal, what parameters can you change to make that happen?

In the end, the only way to really fail is to not try. Even if you don’t accomplish your goal, you will have done something and learned something. Maybe what you learned was what doesn’t work, or how to do it better next time—and sometimes, that is enough.

Get involved in the discussion. The ACS Career Tips column is published monthly in C&EN. Send your comments and ideas for topics for future columns to careernavigator@acs.org.