“If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original. And by the time they are adults most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.”
This quote comes from a somewhat well known presentation delivered by educational specialist Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED Talks. (It has been viewed almost 17,000,000 times; see http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html if you are interested).
A number of you have heard me use this quote in my team building workshops and presentations in the context of wrestling with the practice of constructive conflict. Good conflict is about getting all the best ideas out on the table for discussion and it is difficult to do that if we are afraid the idea we have might be wrong or not the best or that we might look foolish if we suggest it.
Another aspect to this is the focus on creativity. We often speak about the need to be innovative in our organizations in order to address the quickly changing questions, concerns, and issues that we now face, but we do not always spend a great deal of time talking about how we actually build this capacity. In her book, “The Power of Why”, Amanda Lang explores this issue. Of the many ideas she mentions, not being afraid of failing is a key element. In fact, failing – not getting it right the first, second or even the hundredth time – is inherent to the creative process. It might be nice to get everything you are looking for on your first attempt, but life just does not seem to work that way. I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail about a group of people who took this idea to a new level. It was a gathering of entrepreneurs who were getting together to have a “failure fest”. Instead of speaking about their successes, they invited people to talk about all the things that did not go right and, of course, the lessons learned along the way.
Obviously the idea is not to deliberately be wrong, but to understand that in the process of getting to the answer or solution – and to think outside the box – we need to be willing to take risks and accept that we will make mistakes along the way. We need to recognize that failure can have a purpose and can be a critical part of innovation and creativity.
I realize how simple this may sound, but it is not so easy to put into practice. As Robinson points out, many of us have had the fear of being mistaken firmly imbedded in us by the time we become adults and this fear can be hard to overcome. ‘Mistakes make us look incompetent. Mistakes are embarrassing. Mistakes are career-enders’. It can take some effort not to think this way.
The good news is that there are ways to change this perception. Lang suggests a number of ideas in her book and there are other resources available. But at the very least, creating an environment in our workplaces, schools, and families where making a mistake is not the worst possible thing in the world is a good place to start.
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Failure With A Purpose
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original. And by the time they are adults most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.”
This quote comes from a somewhat well known presentation delivered by educational specialist Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED Talks. (It has been viewed almost 17,000,000 times; see http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html if you are interested).
A number of you have heard me use this quote in my team building workshops and presentations in the context of wrestling with the practice of constructive conflict. Good conflict is about getting all the best ideas out on the table for discussion and it is difficult to do that if we are afraid the idea we have might be wrong or not the best or that we might look foolish if we suggest it.
Another aspect to this is the focus on creativity. We often speak about the need to be innovative in our organizations in order to address the quickly changing questions, concerns, and issues that we now face, but we do not always spend a great deal of time talking about how we actually build this capacity. In her book, “The Power of Why”, Amanda Lang explores this issue. Of the many ideas she mentions, not being afraid of failing is a key element. In fact, failing – not getting it right the first, second or even the hundredth time – is inherent to the creative process. It might be nice to get everything you are looking for on your first attempt, but life just does not seem to work that way. I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail about a group of people who took this idea to a new level. It was a gathering of entrepreneurs who were getting together to have a “failure fest”. Instead of speaking about their successes, they invited people to talk about all the things that did not go right and, of course, the lessons learned along the way.
Obviously the idea is not to deliberately be wrong, but to understand that in the process of getting to the answer or solution – and to think outside the box – we need to be willing to take risks and accept that we will make mistakes along the way. We need to recognize that failure can have a purpose and can be a critical part of innovation and creativity.
I realize how simple this may sound, but it is not so easy to put into practice. As Robinson points out, many of us have had the fear of being mistaken firmly imbedded in us by the time we become adults and this fear can be hard to overcome. ‘Mistakes make us look incompetent. Mistakes are embarrassing. Mistakes are career-enders’. It can take some effort not to think this way.
The good news is that there are ways to change this perception. Lang suggests a number of ideas in her book and there are other resources available. But at the very least, creating an environment in our workplaces, schools, and families where making a mistake is not the worst possible thing in the world is a good place to start.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 20th, 2013 at 11:56 am and is filed under Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.