Are Development Practitioners Afraid of Failure?

This blog first appeared on BEAM Exchange on February 11, 2016.

Are you ready to drive change and take risks?

'Failure to launch' or 'failing forward' are concepts closely linked to entrepreneurship culture. If you are an entrepreneur, you get invited to 'failure fests', 'failure conferences', and 'failure panels'. Entrepreneur Elon Musk was applauded for his humility after posting a video online showing the moment his SpaceX rocket failed to land. The bigger the failure story, the more of a celebrity entrepreneur you are. 

Entrepreneurs lurch from one failure to the next, and as fast as they can until they succeed. This culture of embracing failure makes entrepreneurs some of the most successful people in the world. We seldom hear management at large corporations speak openly about their failures; that's because they need to look good, strike the pose, and justify their pay cheques. Today's innovative startup companies are 'disrupting' and transforming traditional industries (think of AirBnB or Uber), and reforms are underway in space exploration, the telecommunications industry, the automotive industry and banking. But what about development practitioners? 

People who work at non-profits are just as passionate, just as smart and just as capable as an average startup. They are also part of small teams and don’t mind working in a small office space or a remote location. They have more in common with startups than large corporations do. But development practitioners are not as effective. Why?

Development practitioners are afraid of failing, and I would even suggest that they consider themselves immune to failure because they are never encouraged or celebrated for their failures.

If you are working in complex market systems or innovative industries, it’s imperative for project staff to take risks. You can explain market development theories, piloting and scaling, and encourage teams to read manuals. But nothing will change unless staff are encouraged to take risk and fail fast.

People may struggle with this new way of working. But is it that hard to embrace a culture where you fail fast, come back to the discussion table and make adjustments to your interventions? Many market development practitioners will argue that they already do this. But what they really do is just switch between 'safer' options.

Can you afford to fail?

Discovering that an approach to solving a problem is wrong is cause for celebration. This discovery lets us pivot towards the right answer. The idea of 'failing forward' always sounds like a good idea when someone else does it, but it can be a different story when you and your colleagues are the ones failing. Honestly assess whether your donor, team, and stakeholders can embrace this way of working. Even if they seem to agree intellectually, not everyone will welcome it in practice. In general, many donors don’t provide funds that allow for the sort of flexibility required to take a lean approach to problem solving. 

Your next round of funding is based on success, not failures. It doesn't matter how many lessons you have learnt, if you don’t eventually tick some boxes, no one is going to give you more money. But a higher level of tolerance for failure is required, provided that you have learnt from failure.

Will a lean approach, and encouragement to fail fast, work in your organisational culture?

You may devise a pilot intervention to test a new idea. You may design appropriate impact measuring tools that give results very early. But you may still fall short — culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. Have you established norms that will support failure? The team needs to be curious, relentless problem solvers who can embrace failing forward and not fall prey to measuring the number of activities and participants. Focus on building the culture before investing in other elements. 

Lastly, can you stand the heat?

Are you really ready to drive change and take risks? If you plan to lead then it’s important to assess your own capability and willingness to make the full investment. How will you handle grumpy donors? How will you feel if you have to let go of long-tenured and experienced team members who cannot adapt? These are tough questions. Please leave your comments below.

Mohd Fahad Ifaz is a M4P consultant and project lead in Myanmar for CARE.