"Don't Be Afraid to Fail" is Currently Nonsense
Not in theory, in practice
If I had a pet otter for each time someone said, “Don’t be afraid to fail,” I’d be filthy with otters. Specifically, I mean authority figures speaking to those who are lower in their org chart, when the real outcome is always the same—not only is the subordinate not allowed to fail, but they are treated harshly for the slightest misstep, which causes them to… never, ever want to put themselves at risk of failing.
Think to yourself: can you provide concrete examples of where failure in your organization/workplace was truly rewarded? Or can you produce far more examples of someone simply saying, “Take risks! Don’t be afraid to fail.” I am going to venture it’s the latter; if I’m wrong, let me know in the comments. If you’re in my business—higher education—you hear this maxim with regularity. To be fair, higher education of nearly all flavors is under great stress; a single dip in enrollment alone can cost millions of dollars and thus people lose their jobs.
Still, as a rule, you shouldn’t tell people “don’t be afraid to fail” unless you mean it and can, like we expect of everything else, assess its outcomes and benefits. There must be real structure in place that at a minimum asks:
What were we going for?
Why didn’t it work?
Was it simply a matter of timing? Could this work in the future?
Can we still achieve the same goals but in a different way?
Did we have the right people involved? Is there a skillset that we’re missing?
What did we learn and how does that knowledge help us right now?
This all seems very basic, right?
Then why do organizations almost never follow through with this? (As individuals, we can, with enough practice, control this process and make it work for us—artists are a great example.) Well, I’ll offer an answer that might be judged as cynical but I believe to be fact until someone convinces me otherwise: saying “don’t be afraid to fail” simply sounds good. It makes the person speaking it look magnanimous and good while also conveying an interest in your growth and advancement. In my experience, this is all talk and no (failed) action.
How can we test this? Good question (I hate it when I say “good question”):
In your organization or group, have you ever been in a positive meeting about failure? Or is it always a tense table or serious Zoom squares where someone is saying, “How come this is a problem and who the heck is going to fix it! How do we make sure this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.”
Have you ever been part of a group, committee, or “task force,” charged with following up on failure to harvest all the positives created by that experience? If a culture says it encourages failure, then these systems should be in place. Without infrastructure to harness the benefits of something you say you are committed to, then you’re just talking. The phrase is meaningless and, frankly, deceptive, as this lack of follow-through extends to the real-life repercussions that exist for the people/employees whom you told it was “okay to fail.”
Have you ever seen anyone congratulated or rewarded for trying something that didn’t work? (For example, many people write incredible grant applications that are not accepted because of intense competition. Does your culture reward grant writing in general, or only the grants that are awarded?)
You can add 100 more things to this list.
I am not going on about the failure of “not being afraid to fail” for any reason beyond my interest in language itself, specifically: its meaning, lack of meaning, connotation, and how words that we put into the world transfer into actions that are not purely linguistic. I frequently intersect with writing, posts, and articles about “leadership,” which I’ll argue is the fastest-growing genre across all media. If you’ve read enough about leadership, you can make a quick list of the core concepts or buzzwords, which when shuffled enough become a tarot deck easily arranged into different leadership narratives. One of the cards in the leadership tarot deck is “don’t be afraid to fail.” When you weigh the number of times this card is turned over against its being supported and rewarded as a practice, it’s hard not to interpret the card as foreboding. What would that card look like? Someone falling from a horse beneath a horizon of dark, encroaching clouds?
In terms of my interest in language, I find this to be an example of leadership in word only, an empty signifier. To be clear, I am not saying that the advice “don’t be afraid to fail” is offered disingenuously or in bad faith; I’d venture that it is almost always offered with good intentions. That’s what interests me so much about this—we have a regularly offered belief that the speakers themselves don’t know how to consciously believe in.
If they did, then there would be systems in place to harness and reward the benefits of the failure being encouraged. You know, like how you want enrollment at a university to go up and you have an actual office of Enrollment Services, hire recruiters, talk regularly about strategy, etc. Maybe we all need an “Office of Failure” or “Center for Failure Innovation.” At least then the concept of “not being afraid to fail” wouldn’t immediately dissipate with the breath that spoke it.
Returning to my "anti-grades" comment on a previous post: Since schools generally "reward" failure with a bad grade, why should any student do anything but play it safe to avoid failure? Yet, not risking failure is a sure way to remain mired in mediocrity. The problem is that most grading systems only evaluate outcomes rather than the processes (some of which may result in failure) that determined those outcomes, the effort applied, the risks taken, and so forth. Meaning basically: no failure allowed; only a successful final product will earn that coveted 'A.'
I was in a presentation where the CEO of a major media company was speaking to a group of entry level employees. He brought up one of the networks that was changing programming and made the point that the current programming, which was failing because the whole concept of it sucked, had been his idea. He was “owning” the failure, but then conveniently forgetting to mention that all the people who were tasked with bringing his shitty idea to life all lost their jobs. Failure for me but not for thee.