Failure is an inevitable part of work. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, projects collapse and ideas just don’t pan out. Not only is that normal, but it can actually be a good thing, according to Leah Carr, Toronto-based venture general manager at Koru.
“Failure sounds like such a negative word. But, in startups, you don’t succeed without failing,” she said. “When I look at my journey through various startups, there’s been a lot of failure along the way. Some of it is personal failure. Some of it is company failure. And some of it, you’d never be able to control no matter what you did.”
And while that doesn’t necessarily ease the pain of setbacks — “failure sucks,” she said — Carr is grateful because she has learned a lot while navigating tough times. One of her biggest failures came during her tenure in a job she truly loved when there was a leadership change at the top.
“Instead of remaining the person I was — someone who had authority, the CEO’s ear, and played a really strong leadership role in the company — I really let that person beat me down,” she said. “I think that was bad for the company as well, because instead of standing up for myself and for others who reported to this individual, I just sort of let it break me.”
Be resilient
The lesson Carr took away from that is the need to be resilient. “Not everything is always going to be perfect,” she said. “Going through hard times and getting through the other side is really part of what gives work meaning, and I think I could have done a lot more than that.”
It also served to reinforce another fact in organizations: “Watching how one poor hire at the leadership level can absolutely tank the culture of an entire company,” said Carr. “As much as we wish it weren’t this way, everything is top down.”
That means if the person at the top isn’t reflective, doesn’t have strong peer advisors, and doesn’t listen to other team members? It’s going to trickle down, in a negative way, throughout the organization, she said.
“I watched a company go from the absolute best job a lot of us had ever had to the absolute worst,” said Carr. “And you can attribute that to some poor leadership hiring.”
‘It’s rarely personal’
She learned a number of lessons from that experience, including to disconnect herself from what is happening. “It is rarely personal,” she said.
“That person had a very bullying leadership style, which is not a style that works well with me,” said Carr. “You have to be able to say to yourself, ‘This isn’t me. I’m going to go through my interactions with this person, but I’m going to keep my game face on.'”
That way, she can walk away, put it out of her head, and focus on the things that need to be done to help her, the team, and the company reach its goals. But, at the same time, if you’re in a senior role there is responsibility to push for what is right.
“You have to make sure that you’re pushing for what’s best for the people and what’s best for the company,” she said. “I had done that in the past, and I didn’t do it there.”
And if you’re running a company? Then you absolutely need to get beyond the top leadership team and get into the trenches to get a true pulse of what is going on, said Carr. “You have to make time to walk the floor. You have to talk to your people, and you have to listen to your people and then use your own intuition to observe what is really going on.”
If a certain leader is performing, but undermining the culture and causing long-term damage, then a decision may have to be made to let them go, she said. “Sometimes, you just have to make those tough decisions.”
Not all failure is created equal
And while it goes without saying, not all failures have a silver lining and some can’t be tolerated.
“There’s obviously some failure that you can’t accept, like if someone is failing at a regulatory thing or they make a really big mistake,” she said. “That’s a different story and not what we’re talking about here.”
Celebrating the lessons
When there is a failure, Carr advocates for celebrating the lessons learned. If someone walks into her office and said they’ve failed at something, it sparks a conversation.
“Tell me about what happened. You have to first start by asking the questions, and the questions you’re asking should be not only trying to learn what happened, but trying to help them learn what happened,” she said. “I think sometimes we go straight to giving feedback.”
That’s a miss because it doesn’t give the person the opportunity to assess their own mistakes. Once both sides understand what happened, the conversation can move to questions like “What did you learn from this?” and “What are the opportunities for improvement?”
“Also make sure that person is seeking feedback from those who were involved or those who were affected,” she said. “And I think it’s important to celebrate the efforts that were made, recognize the perseverance, and then implement the changes.”
If it’s a company-wide failure, and not at the individual level, then it’s important to conduct a retrospective as a group, said Carr.
If people need a bit of time to be upset about the failure, that’s perfectly fine, she said. Often, the project in question has been in the works for months and it can be a bitter pill to swallow.
“I’m saying a little bit of time, not months. But sometimes I need to go home for a weekend and not think about it, and then come back Monday with fresh eyes.”
Soft versus hard approaches
Often, workers will be their own worst critics. If someone is beating themselves up over a failure, then management doesn’t need to pile on, she said.
“That probably is a time to be soft,” she said. But if the worker is being too blasé, then a firmer hand might be appropriate.
“I’ve always believed that everyone deserves to be managed and led the way they want to be,” said Carr. “It really is, honestly, person to person. I’ve had people reporting to me that are so hard on themselves with a failure, that I would always go to the soft side. Then I’d have some people that were constantly failing — maybe they weren’t trying as hard — and that’s where I would come in more firm.”
In those cases, it’s worth asking them how they’re going to fix it or if they want their leader to tell them how they think it should be fixed, said Carr. “It’s very situational.”
Handling your own failures as a leader
When you’re doing navel gazing about your own mistakes, turning to a colleague or a peer can help, she said.
“When I’m having a really, really hard day, I will call one of the people that I consider an advisor or mentor,” said Carr.
That could be a conversation with one person, or tapping into the minds of a few different people. “Just ask them, ‘What have you done?’ Sometimes, the information they’re giving you is unhelpful, but just the fact that they’re listening and can relate already makes you feel a lot better.”
She also carves out time on the weekend to do whatever is needed to get through it. “Maybe it’s being mad at myself. Maybe it’s not thinking about work at all and going for a long run or getting a massage. I’ll allow myself that little bit of time to be angry.”
Reframing ‘failure’
Carr’s parting advice is to remember that failure isn’t always something to get upset about — and even the word itself can be problematic.
“We really should reframe it. Was this a failure? Or was this a great experiment?” she said.
In the startup world, a lot of time is spent on “proof of concepts.” The entire point of the exercise is to gather information.
“When it doesn’t prove successful, we don’t consider that a failure,” said Carr. “We ran a proof of concept and we learned. I think we need to do that a little bit more in our day-to-day.”
