I was really impressed by the presentation at SxSW by Jean Case (@jeancase), wife of Steve Case and co-founder of the Case Foundation.
Her session focused on not being afraid to tell the truth about the ups and downs of our organizations and movements, even when we have been wrong. Advice: "Make failure matter. If you are not failing, you are not progressing." Emphasis on this point with the new hashtag #failforward. If failure happens: learn from it, make it matter, fail fast, and fail forward.
Mrs. Case also advocated for philanthropy in the recipe for social good with the recipe of adding 1 part be fearless to 1 part be helpful. A great video on this concept is on the Be Fearless website for "What it Means to be Fearless".
She even used the Eleanor Roosevelt quote "You must do the things you think you cannot do" to emphasize her point. Be strong when you are weak. Be brave when you are scared, and humble when you are victorious. And Bill Gates was cited with "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."
Part of the Case Foundation website is the new section "Be Fearless" which includes a pledge to "ignite a more fearless approach to changemaking" - http:/befearless.casefoundation.org.
The 5 key elements of a Fearless Approach include:
1. Make Big Bets - set audacious, not incremental, goals.
You can learn about the Big Hairy Audacious Goal which was proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in the book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
2. Experiment Early & Often - don't be afraid to go first.
When you think a certain intervention is working, that's when you need to be looking down the road to see what new tools or dynamics will challenge your assumptions or provide even better solutions.
3. Make Failure Matter - failure teachers. Learn from it.
The greatest innovators experienced moments of failure but the truly great among them wear those failures as a badge of honor.
4. Reach Beyond Your Bubble - It's comfortable to go it alone. But innovation happens at intersections.
This isn't just adapting new ideas but for forging new partnerships and collaborations within and across your field.
5. Let Urgency Conquer Fear - Don't overthink and overanalyze. Do.
Don't get stuck in a spiral of contemplation where perpetual study replaces action.
Based on the retweets and favorited comments, most of the audience responded positively to the idea of failing fast and failing forward. Letting the momentum of fail carry them down in order to quickly get back up and dream even bigger than before.
In another session on innovation and change, a panelist shared about FailCon, which is a one-day conference for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers, and designers to study their own and other's failures and prepare for success.
I find this incredibly fascinating. It isn't often we are given opportunity to embrace our failure and share it with others in order to help us all along the way. A good church is about the only place where you have people step up to the plate and take responsibility for their failure and accept the humility of their own stumble. In our field, where is the place where we share our failures? A conference? Could a session on failure include a panel of change-makers going to that dark point and sharing their own failure to help others?
I look at Twitter and see a lot of self-congratulatory, self-promotion in most of my feeds and it makes me wonder if given a chance, how many would admit failure? Not system failure or how an event failed out of your control, but how they failed by mistake or inaction. Can we allow ourselves to share about failing? Even more, could we share a fail without adding the element of the turn-around? Do all stories need a happy ending?
Imagine opening this up as a summer PD with teachers about their struggles and failings in the classroom. What can a group learn from each other when opening up about failure? What could principals learn from each other or from their campus if failure was openly discussed?
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