Kitabı oku: «Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All», sayfa 4

THE FAILURE PARADOX

A widely held myth suggests that creative geniuses rarely fail. Yet according to Professor Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California, Davis, the opposite is actually true: creative geniuses, from artists like Mozart to scientists like Darwin, are quite prolific when it comes to failure—they just don’t let that stop them. His research has found that creative people simply do more experiments. Their ultimate “strokes of genius” don’t come about because they succeed more often than other people—they just do more, period. They take more shots at the goal. That is the surprising, compelling mathematics of innovation: if you want more success, you have to be prepared to shrug off more failure.

Take Thomas Edison, for example.

Edison, one of the most famous and prolific inventors in history, had failure baked into his creative process. He understood that an experiment ending in failure is not a failed experiment—as long as constructive learning is gained. He invented the incandescent lightbulb, but only after the lessons of a thousand unsuccessful attempts. Edison maintained that the “real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into twenty-four hours.”

In fact, early failure can be crucial to success in innovation. Because the faster you find weaknesses during an innovation cycle, the faster you can improve what needs fixing. We grew up in Ohio, home of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright. The Wright brothers are best remembered for what is sometimes called the “first flight,” in December of 1903 at Kitty Hawk. But the focus on that accomplishment overlooks the hundreds of experiments and failed flight trials in the years that led up to that first successful flight. In fact, some reports suggest that the Wright brothers picked Kitty Hawk in part because the remote Outer Banks location would draw less media attention during their experiments.

The surprising, compelling mathematics of innovation: if you want more success, you have to be prepared to shrug off more failure.

Edison and the Wright brothers may seem like ancient history, but the tradition of learning from enlightened trial and error is still very much alive today. When Steelcase decided to reinvent the traditional classroom chair—eclipsing that uncomfortable wooden version with the writing surface rigidly attached to the chair arm—they worked with our design team to build over two hundred prototypes in all shapes and sizes. Early on, they experimented with small paper-and-Scotch-tape models. Later in the project, they constructed plywood components, attaching them to pieces of existing chairs. They went to local colleges, asking students and professors to interact with these “experience models” and give feedback. They carved shapes out of foam and fabricated parts on 3D printers to get a sense of shape and size. They prototyped mechanisms in steel. And as release to manufacturing approached, they built sophisticated full-size models that looked exactly like the real thing. All that relentless experimentation—and the associated learning—paid off. The Node chair replaced the rigidity of its predecessors with a comfortable swivel seat, an adjustable work surface, casters for maneuverability, and a tripod base to hold backpacks. The result is a mobile, flexible twenty-first-century classroom chair that quickly transitions from lecture-based seating to group activities, fitting with today’s varied teaching styles. Launched in 2010, Node chairs are already in use at eight hundred schools and universities around the world.

Neither Edison nor the Wright brothers nor modern-day innovators like the design team on the Node chair were defensive or embarrassed about their method of trial and error. Ask seasoned innovators and they will likely have an impressive collection of “war stories” about failures on their path toward success.

DESIGNING FOR COURAGE

Albert Bandura used the process of guided mastery—a series of small successes—to help people gain courage and overcome deep-seated phobias. What would have been nearly impossible to accomplish in one giant leap became manageable in small steps, with the guidance of someone knowledgeable in the field. In a similar way, we use a step-by-step progression to help people discover and experience the tools and methodologies of design thinking, gradually increasing the level of challenge to help individuals transcend the fear of failure that blocks their best ideas. These small successes are intrinsically rewarding and help people to go on to the next level.

In our classes and workshops, we first ask people to work through quick design challenges, whether it’s to redesign the gift-giving experience or to rethink their daily commute. We may jump in with some help or a small nudge, but mostly we let them figure out solutions themselves. Building confidence through experience encourages more creative action in the future, which further bolsters confidence. For this reason, we frequently ask students and team members to complete multiple quick design projects rather than one big project, to maximize the number of learning cycles.

At the d.school, one of the goals of getting people to work together on a project is to help them practice new skills and challenge themselves—and most likely experience failure as a result. We believe the lessons learned from failures may make us smarter—even stronger. But that doesn’t make failure any more fun. So most of us naturally try to avoid failure at all costs. Failure is hard, even painful. As Stanford professor Bob Sutton and IDEO partner Diego Rodriguez often say at the d.school, “Failure sucks, but instructs.”

The inescapable link between failure and innovation is a lesson you can learn only through doing. We give students a chance to fail as soon as possible, in order to maximize the learning time that follows. Instead of long lectures followed by exercises, most of our classes at the d.school give students a little instruction up front and then get them working on a project or a challenge. We follow up in debriefs to reflect on what succeeded—and what can be learned from things that didn’t work.

“Many d.school classes demand that student teams keep pushing the limits of possibility until they face-plant,” says IDEO partner and consulting associate professor Chris Flink. “The personal resilience, courage, and humility born of a healthy failure form a priceless piece of their education and growth.”

Facing failure in order to wipe away the fear is something understood intuitively by our friend John “Cass” Cassidy, lifelong innovator and creator of Klutz Press. In his book Juggling for the Complete Klutz, Cass didn’t start us out juggling two balls, or even one. He began with something more basic: “The Drop.” Step one is simply to throw all three balls in the air and let them drop. Then repeat. In learning to juggle, the angst comes from failure—from having the ball fall to the floor. So with step one, Cass aims to numb aspiring jugglers to that. Having the ball fall to the floor becomes more normal than the ball not falling to the floor. After we address our fear of failure, juggling becomes a lot easier. The two of us were skeptical at first, but with the help of his simple approach, we really did learn to juggle.

Fear of failure holds us back from learning all sorts of new skills, from taking on risks, and from tackling new challenges. Creative confidence asks that we overcome that fear. You know you are going to drop the ball, make mistakes, and go in a wrong direction or two. But you come to accept that it’s part of learning. And in doing so, you are able to remain confident that you are moving forward despite the setbacks.

OVERCOMING FEAR OF CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS

We know from experience that our students often have a fear of venturing out onto the turf of customers and users in attempts to gain empathy with them. At the d.school, lecturer Caroline O’Connor and managing director Sarah Stein Greenberg have helped many students move past that fear, one step at a time. Here are a few ways of gaining empathy that they suggest, adapted for use in a business context. The techniques on the list start out easy and become increasingly challenging.

1. BE A “FLY ON THE WALL” IN AN ONLINE FORUM. Pay attention as potential customers share feedback, air their grievances, and ask questions. You’re not looking for evaluations of features or cost; you’re searching for pain points and latent needs among the people on the forum.

2. TRY YOUR OWN CUSTOMER SERVICE. Go through the experience of interacting with customer service, pretending to be a customer. Notice how your problem is handled, and how you feel along the way. Try mapping out the individual steps in the process and then graph the ups and downs of your mood or satisfaction.

3. TALK WITH UNEXPECTED EXPERTS. What does the receptionist have to say about your firm’s customer experience? If you’re in health care, talk to a medical assistant rather than a doctor. If you make a physical product, ask a repair person to tell you about what goes wrong with it.

4. PLAY DETECTIVE IN PURSUIT OF INSIGHT. Take some reading material and a pair of headphones to a retail space or an industry conference (or, if your customers are internal, an area where people tend to gather). Observe people’s behavior, and try to figure out what is going on. How are they interacting with your product or service? What can you glean from their body language that indicates their level of engagement or interest?

5. INTERVIEW SOME CUSTOMERS. Think of a few open-ended questions about your product or service. Go to a place where your customers spend time, and find someone you are comfortable approaching. Tell them you’d like to ask a few questions. If the person refuses, no problem, just try someone else. Eventually you’ll find someone who’s willing—even dying—to talk to you. Press for more detail with every question. Ask “Why?” and “Can you tell me more about that?”—even if you think you already know the answer. Sometimes their responses will surprise you and point you toward new opportunities.

URGENT OPTIMISM

We can all learn something about effort and failure from the world of gaming. Author, futurist, and game designer Jane McGonigal talked to us recently about how video gaming can spark its own form of creative confidence. Jane makes a convincing case that harnessing the power of video games can have a major impact on life in the real world. In the realm of video games, the level of challenge and reward rises proportionately with a gamer’s skills; moving forward always requires concentrated effort, but the next goal is never completely out of reach. This contributes to what Jane calls “urgent optimism”: the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, motivated by the belief that you have a reasonable hope of success. Gamers always believe that an “epic win” is possible—that it is worth trying, and trying now, over and over again. In the euphoria of an epic win, gamers are shocked to discover the extent of their capabilities. As you move from level to level, success can flip your mindset to a state of creative confidence. We’ve all seen this kind of persistence and gradual mastery of skills in children—from toddlers learning to walk to kids learning how to shoot a basketball.

Tom witnessed urgent optimism in action one Christmas morning when his teenage son Sean opened up a Tony Hawk skateboard video game and started trying it out. In addition to the usual on-screen action, the game comes with a controller that looks exactly like a real skateboard—minus the wheels. So there was Sean, balancing on a full-sized skateboard in the family room, surrounded by three generations of Kelleys. The family watched failure after failure as Sean’s character on screen smashed into brick walls, skidded off of railings, and collided with other skaters. Potentially more embarrassing, Sean himself fell off the skateboard controller several times, nearly crashing through the glass coffee table beside him on the floor. But neither the on-screen calamities nor the occasional loss of balance in the physical world fazed Sean one bit. In the social context of the gaming world, he wasn’t really failing—despite the noisy on-screen sound effects of his spectacular falls. Sean knew that he was on a path to learning. In fact, since reading about a video game is not much help, he was on essentially the only path available to gaining expertise.

By adapting the best attributes of gaming culture, we can shift people’s view of failure and ratchet up their willingness and determination to persevere. We just need to hold out a “reasonable hope of success,” as well as the possibility of a truly epic win. For example, in working with colleagues or on a team, we’ve found that if team members believe that every idea gets fair consideration, and that a meritocracy allows their proposals to be judged across divisional and hierarchical lines, they tend to put all of their energy and their creative talents to work on ideas and proposals for change. They work harder, persist longer, and maintain their urgent optimism when they believe victory is just around the corner.

But even after you overcome your initial fear of failure and gain creative confidence, you need to continue stretching yourself. Like a muscle, your creative abilities will grow and strengthen with practice. Continuing to exercise them will keep them in shape. All innovators need to make creative leaps: What need should you focus on? Which idea do you go with? What should you prototype? That is where experience and intuition come in.

Diego Rodriguez in his blog Metacool says that innovation thinkers often use “informed intuition” to identify a great insight, a key need, or a core feature. In other words, relentless practice creates a database of experience that you can draw upon to make more enlightened choices. When it comes to bringing new stuff into the world, Diego argues that the number of product cycles you’ve gone through (what he calls “mileage”) trumps the number of years of experience. A twenty-year veteran of the auto industry who works several years on each new vehicle before it goes to market might have experienced far fewer cycles than a software developer working just two years on mobile apps that ship every couple of months. Once you have gone through enough rapid innovation cycles, you will gain familiarity with process and confidence in your ability to assess new ideas. And that confidence results in reduced anxiety in the face of ambiguity when you are bringing new ideas into the world.

PERMISSION TO FAIL

Whether you consider yourself a “born innovator” or are new to creative confidence, you can get better faster at coming up with new ideas if you give yourself and those around you the leeway to make mistakes from time to time. Permission to fail comes more easily in some settings than others. Venture capitalist Randy Komisar says that what distinguishes pockets of entrepreneurship like Silicon Valley is not their successes but the way they deal with failure. In cultures that encourage entrepreneurs, there is a greater appreciation and understanding of what Komisar calls “constructive failure.”

Fear of risk and failure was a central theme when IDEO worked with German entrepreneur Lars Hinrichs on reinventing European venture capital. Research with software developers in the United States and Europe showed that the transition from a stable corporate job to the uncertainty of an early startup was one of the scariest moments in the evolution of a new venture. Many never managed to take that leap of faith. For lots of fledgling entrepreneurs, leaving the comfort and security of a salaried job stopped them in their tracks. So we structured the offering for Hinrichs’s new early-stage investment company, HackFWD, to make that transition less intimidating. We helped give entrepreneurs a support network and resources so they could focus their efforts on what they do best. As part of HackFWD’s “Geek Agreement”—published on the firm’s website—entrepreneurs are paid roughly their current salary for a year as they push their concept toward the beta stage and one step closer to market and profitability. They also get connected to a network of experienced advisors. Quitting your day job remains a scary step, but maintaining your current income for a year makes it easier to pursue new-to-the-world ideas.

Within large companies, CEOs and executives have started to make similar efforts to reduce perceived risks and show their commitment to innovation initiatives. For example, VF Corporation—the world’s largest apparel company and owner of dozens of familiar brands ranging from Nautica to The North Face—started an internal innovation fund a few years ago. Overseen by vice president of strategy and innovation Stephen Dull, the fund helps bootstrap innovative ideas at their earliest stages. It allows business unit managers to take entrepreneurial risks while meeting all the performance targets with their current product offerings. One successful innovation fund program explored whether VF’s Wrangler brand, historically popular with cowboys in the American West, could be translated to appeal to motorcycle riders in India. The result was a line of jeans with features like water-repellent fabric that appeal to India’s highly mobile youth market. To date, VF’s innovation fund has sponsored more than ninety-seven such innovative ventures around the world.

We all need the latitude to try out new ideas. Look for ways to grant yourself creative license, or give yourself the equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. Label your next new idea an experiment, and let everyone know that you are just testing it out. Lower others’ expectations, so that failure can lead to learning without career damage.

EMBRACE YOUR FAILURES

An old proverb reminds us that “success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” To learn from failure, however, you have to “own” it. You have to figure out what went wrong and what to do better next time. If you don’t, you’re liable to repeat your errors in the future.

Acknowledging mistakes is also important for moving on. In doing so, you not only sidestep the psychological pitfalls of cover-up, rationalization, and guilt; you may also find that you enhance your own brand through your honesty, candor, and humility.

Ask financial services professionals about their recent performance, and you are likely to hear a lot of “spin,” as they either ignore their losses or cloud them with phrases like “market corrections” or “industry downdrafts.” Nonetheless, one of our favorite examples of a company owning its failures comes from financial services. Bessemer Venture Partners is a well-respected, hundred-year-old venture capital firm that has gotten in on the ground floor of some stellar growth companies. Their website predictably features their “Top Exits.” What’s refreshing and not so predictable is that one click away from these mega-successes is a catalog of miscues and failed foresight Bessemer calls their “Anti-Portfolio.” As Bessemer explains, their “long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up.” One of their partners passed over a chance to invest in the Series A round of PayPal, which sold a few years later for $1.5 billion. The firm also passed—seven times—on the chance to invest in FedEx, currently worth over $30 billion.

One of the firm’s strongest advocates for the “Anti-Portfolio” idea, partner David Cowan, plays a starring role in its stories of missed opportunities and failures. A former neighbor of Tom’s, Cowan lived within walking distance from the Silicon Valley garage where Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google. Cowan was good friends with the woman who rented them the garage, and she tried to introduce him one day to these “two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine.” Cowan’s response: “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

Bessemer’s Anti-Portfolio is part of a trend among enlightened individuals and organizations who want to shine a bright light on their mistakes and learn from that dispassionate observation. The Forbes Midas List ranks Cowan among the top venture capitalists in the world for turning startup investments into gold. Could owning up to his failures have cleared the path for his out-sized success?

Look around, and you will see other signs of this shift in thinking. Failure conferences are cropping up in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Author and educator Tina Seelig asks her students to write a “failure résumé” that highlights their biggest defeats and screw-ups. She says that smart people accustomed to promoting their successes find it very challenging. In the process of compiling their failure résumé, however, they come to own their setbacks, both emotionally and intellectually.

“Viewing their experiences through the lens of failure forces them to come to terms with the mistakes they have made along the way,” Tina writes in her book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20. She is brave enough to include her own failure résumé, pointing out missteps such as not paying attention to company culture early in her career and avoiding conflicts in personal relationships. Now more aware and open about her early shortcomings, Tina is not held back by them. She’s the executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, nurturing tomorrow’s entrepreneurial leaders.