Embracing Failure
Thomas Edison is credited with saying he never failed, he just found thousands of ways that don't work. But, don't forget he had a whole team of people working for/with him on these ideas, lots of resources, and maybe wasn’t the nicest person.
Unless you count my students whom I encourage to try new things, I don’t have a team. My resources are limited (although as a college professor I can harness a lot!), and I’m nice. So, what is a happy failure? How can I become one? Thanks to my Innovation Fellowship, I’m considering these questions. That’s fun homework - consider how to fail!
From my creativity type (Innovator) explanation, I learned that I struggle with the "messy middle". I LOVE to plan, get things ready, try out new things, etc. And I love to see my plans come to fruition. But that in-between part? I'm not a fan. We transformed our unloved guest room into a home office (paint, Ikea furniture, etc.) in just 2 days because I hated the idea of dragging it out. I'm coming up on the mid-term slump when the semester drags for me. This might not seem like it directly applies to the question of failure, but here's how it applies to me: the messy middle feels like non-attainment to me. Maybe if I embrace it, the middle bit won't feel like such a slog. Maybe the middle is an opportunity!
For students, I have found that they would rather fail an assignment that they do poorly rather than get feedback on it. Only the ones who have something good already are keen to show you. Even when I required "rough drafts", students didn't turn them in. So, I have a sort of sneaky approach now. I allow them to revise major assignments based on my feedback of the "final" entry. It's a way to allow them to fail (or at least not do well) then improve.
The article “Failing by Design” in the Harvard Business Journal lays out principles for failure.
First of all, I love this concept: "Researchers say that what people think of as intuition is, at its heart, highly developed pattern recognition." Teachers certainly develop pattern recognition in students and can therefore discern integrity to an extent. I'm going to actually pick more than one principle. I like these!
As a historian, I like Principle 2: Convert assumptions into knowledge. I always tell my students that they will uncover some very uncomfortable things about the past. Whatever they assume, they will be proven wrong at some point. And “Principle 3: fail fast” is easy to accomplish when we have courses that last from 3 -16 weeks. Short and sweet and ripe for quick failure!
I saw "Principle 6: Build a culture that celebrates intelligent failure" come into play in my class today. I gave a discussion question as a follow-up to a short lecture. They went into small groups in breakout rooms to chat about it and type their answers on a shared document. None of the four groups got the answer I was looking for, and some got it quantitatively wrong. Some apologized. Instead, I used the moment to tell them that these discussions are formative, not for a grade, and taking a risk helps them understand on a deeper level.
I will try to put “Principle 7: Codify and share what you learn” into practice on this little blog!
