Safe To Fail Experiments

What is “Safe to Fail”?

Recently, I failed a motorbike test. This might sound like a mistake, but I fully expected to fail. In the UK, you must pass multiple tests before you’re allowed out on the roads on a motorbike, and one involves a number of fast and slow manoeuvres in a test area, away from public roads.  

This test itself takes about 30 minutes and is rather cheap to do. Lessons, on the other hand, are expensive! In order to best prepare for the test in the future, what better way than to have an attempt at one without any expectation to pass? In this case, there were no negative consequences of failure, only learning: I got feedback on the errors you made and where I could improve. And I got first-hand experience of the test, without the pressure of feeling like I should pass (I figured that if I somehow passed, it would simply be a bonus!).
 

Safe to fail experiments

In this sense, the test was a “safe to fail” experiment. There is great power in defining what is “safe to fail”, because it helps us shape our efforts and experiments so that we can gain maximum learning at minimal cost of failure. In our workshops with teams, defining what is safe-to-fail is a core part of improving performance and making it safer to take intelligent risks.

In the Technology Team Practice Playbook, we also include a “safe to fail” canvas to help you shape experiments and minimise the impact of failure. It’s not just a practice for technology teams though!

On the theme of making intentional mistakes, or at least running safe-to-fail experiments, at home, we’re currently reading one idea each night from this book called “How To Live” by Derek Sivers. It’s a fascinating and rather poetic exploration of 27 different ways to live a life, from being a pioneer or letting random chance decide your path, to being devoutly religious. My personal favourite so far has been “making a million mistakes”. I’m summarising some of Derek’s key ideas from it here:

• Always learn from your mistakes. Keep a log of them.
• Make deliberate mistakes.
• Aim high, be prepared to make big mistakes – some of them might even work.
• Try to be wrong: look for lessons that surprise you and disprove your existing beliefs.
• Create predicaments and get into good trouble.
• If you’re never wrong, you never change. Keep making mistakes, so you keep changing, learning and growing.
• Share your stories from your mistakes for the benefit of others.
• Even a plane crash makes the next one less likely.

What safe-to-fail experiments could you take? How could you make some of your existing goals safe-to-fail?

Psychological safety at work:

I’ve just watched “Working: What We Do All Day” on Netflix, and I absolutely loved it. Hosted by Barack Obama, this short series looks at three different industries: home care, tech, and hospitality, following the experiences of 12 different people. A number of things really stood out to me, including the dramatic income gap between those at the frontline of work and those in senior leadership or highly specialised knowledge roles. It was also fascinating to see the positive impact of employment law, unions, and social security safety nets on people’s work experience. Well worth a watch – catch the trailer here.

I was honoured to be asked to join Bala on his excellent podcast “Agility Awakenings”. We really got into it, and discussed complexity, systems thinking, and psychological safety frameworks – the difference between theoretical and practical frameworks, and whether we need any more theoretical frameworks of psychological safety!

I love this toxic leadership cartoon from Wumo, and thanks to Balazs for sharing it with me!

In a recent Rebranding Safety podcast, we discussed “banter” in the workplace, and this study from Irwin Mitchell highlights that it’s a bigger problem than we may have thought: around a third of people have experienced bullying in the workplace disguised as (or intended to be) “banter”.

Last week, I shared that Elita Silva had translated my leadership vs management graphic into Portuguese, and this week, the fabulous Ana Aneiros Vivas, Safety Culture Consultant has translated it into Spanish!

Thanks so much to the awesome Cherisa Zafft for facilitating this week’s psychological safety meetup, and all the wonderful people who attended. It was fab; we had some great conversations and I learned a lot from the amazing folks there. You can listen to Cherisa’s summary of the event in this awesome video, and check out the great wordcloud below that we generated in the meetup 🙂

This week’s poem:

The Hill We Climb, by Amanda Gorman

When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

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And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared it at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,
our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Amanda Gorman’s amazing poem that she read at Joe Biden’s inauguration has been restricted at a Florida school, and will now only be accessible to middle school students at the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, Florida.