Failure

A good post on Brains on Fire today about playing it safe made me think about something I've been struggling with for a while.  I posted a comment there, but it made me want to write something here as well.

In my experience in this industry, it seems that most people are driven more by the desire to avoid failure, and more specifically to avoid blame for failure, rather than a desire to acheive success.  Most people would rather have safe 1% growth on their brands than aim for 50% or 100% growth and changing the category, because that entails risk of failure (if it was guaranteed, everyone would have done it already). 

This is partly driven by the inherently conservative nature of people - people who have kids and mortgages and so on - to not want to put their neck on the line.  It's partly driven by a cultural belief that failure is bad and demeaning, rather than an opportunity to learn and grow (if that sounds like trite new age wisdom, consider that the New Coke disaster, often cited as one of the biggest business failures, was the best thing to happen to Coke - it refocused them and showed them the real meaning of the Coke brand after they'd lost their way in the early 1980s, and led to the successes of Coke Classic and "Always").  It's also partly institutions and economics - most companies compensate people based on short-term growth, rather than long-term vision, and stigmatize failure.   Nobody wants to be the person who lost a chunk of shareholder money.  Really, how many organizations actively encourage risk-taking and challenging convention?  Not a lot.

This is why so many decisions are not made by individual judgement, but by committee, or by research.  These are structures that mitigate individual responsibility for a decision.  I've seen people approve something which no one really believes will work because "the research said people liked it" - even if everyone kind of knows the research was flawed.  But they approve nonetheless, because if it fails, they're blameless: "the consumers told us to do it."

But isn't this a tragic shame at a time when the world of media and brands and culture are changing so much?  "Safe" has diminishing returns and is itself becoming risky.  It's time to experiment. It's time to challenge the rules. It's a time to take calculated, strategic risks.

It made me think about something else: blogging is easy, the real world is hard.  A lot of you probably believe in the stuff above.  But how many of us are doing it everyday?  I'm not.  It's easy to say that we need to experiment and change the rules when it's here in the abstract, without a specific client and a room full of sceptical people sitting in front of me.  It's easy to do when there are lots of really great, supportive, like-minded people reading and blogging and participating in these conversations.  But it's harder - a lot harder - when faced with a room full of people who don't share this point of view, who don't want to talk about risk, who think that using the same media plan as the last 5 years is fine, who aren't looking for debate, who just want to get out of the meeting and check something else off their list.  And so it's easy to back down in those situations, to say "I'll pick my battles" or "this isn't the right client to have this discussion with."  I've done this.  Lots.  And I regret it afterwards.  It's like the feeling I have when someone makes an offensive remark and I let it slide.

I love the blogging community.  I believe that the best, most forward thinking discussion in the world right now about brands is going on in places like here, here, here, and here (and lots of others).  But I also see  a danger of a different kind of complacency - a complacency that comes from spending a lot of time with like-minded people and not enough time doing.  So here's my challenge to myself: to argue for more of this stuff, to demonstrate its importance to even the biggest sceptics, to find ways to make experimentation seem less risky, and not to compromise or back down for the sake of expediency.  Yikes.  Did I just say that?

I guess what I'm saying is takes a brave individual to speak up in an organization and argue for changing things, especially in defiance of conventional wisdom or company politics or research.  That makes it a rare individual.  But these are usually the people who change the world.

Well, that turned into a bit of a rant, didn't it?

Comments

[Spike Jones]

Glad we could provide the springboard, Jason. Rant or not, you make some great points.

[russell]

Brilliant stuff Jason.

You've made me realise that one of the countless ways i've been very lucky is to end up working for companies who had a slightly different sense of what failure looked like to many others. So there was still all the peer/financial/career pressure to avoid failure, it's just that failure was defined as not taking some risks etc. It's hard to take risks in a culture that doesn't reward it. But once you've got going it's a hard habit to break.

I also know what you mean about the way we all end up talking to ourselves about how innovative we are on our blogs. And then we go on doing the same old same old in our 'real lives'. Good wake-up call. Maybe we should all try to talk about the things we've actually managed to do, rather than how the world will be when we're elected Emperor.

[olivier blanchard]

Awesome post, Jason. Seriously.

[MarcusBrown]

Jason,

I'm a late starter when it comes to blogs, and found it initially quite difficult to find "a place" to hang out. And my thanks goes out to the people who have made me welcome (of which you are one).

It's exciting reading all of you're stuff, but I think you're right, it's time do start turning some of the thinking into action. And get stuff wrong. And then learn from it and make it better.

That, Jason, would be different.

Great post. G-Force

[Jason Oke]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. After I'd posted that I thought "well, that made me seem a bit unhinged." But it seems like this has struck a chord with some of you. Glad to hear I'm not alone.

[John Grant]

"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." (FDR)

That's sort of where I'd pitch in on this debate. I dont think we should be limited to only speaking about stuff that actually came off (my books would be pretty thin otherwise) Or is it just me being crap at getting things through? In my experienmce most innovation fails, you need lots of ideas all the way through things just to get a few made. I have been counting how many ideas I pitched to a long-running recent but now ex- client which didnt get traction but have since been hits for others (5 so far). One example is a 'walkie talkie' type app for mobiles so you can have a conference call with five mates. Apparently that's been launched in Canada & is doing well.

I quite like blogging as a place for speculative ideas though. You need somewhere to rehearse when so much of the rest of the time you have to perform. There have been loads of good contributions on my blog recently about the future of TV. None of them will actually happen because we dont work in this biz, but it's a good way to think about what is missing/possible.

I get the general point of your rant though and maybe one thing is to challenge people who say they are into 'the new stuff' but actually doing the same old S***.

I managed to alienate quite a few people recently at a big media agency event when I challenged them on this; "you say you are innovating and pushing the new marketing agenda but actually we fundamentally disagree on things like consistency, the big idea and media netutrality" (I'm against all of those). "So please dont pretend to be on my side!" I probably overdid it because some of the audience seemed quite upset. Several big name clients came and asked me afterwards if I had no respect for traditions, heritage and so on. Still it made me feel better :)

[claudiu]

Very inspiring post, Jason! Thank you for sharing.