MSIGHT Team Value: Our Attitude Towards Failure

One of the perks of working in MSIGHT is that we got to experiment on so many things outside the telco domain. Naturally, experimenting in a new business is full of uncertainty and blind spots. The spectrum of outcomes is very wide from a total success to a total failure. Research says that 9 out of 10 experiments will end up fail.

Admitting a failure is sometimes difficult when we are inside a big company where success is our day-to-day menu. There is always a tendency to provides positive-only reports to stakeholders.

The challenge is to maintain a delicate balance between admitting mistakes/failures and preserve team morale. How to openly discuss failure without letting it knock the team morale down. How to stay positive and motivated while discussing mistakes.

Another thing is balancing between telling the (ugly) truth to stakeholders and maintain their confidence. It is wrong to assume that we have unlimited time and resources to experiment. The window of opportunity is limited and closing fast. On the other hand, a team needs a psychological safety to try and move forward.

We have been trying to keep this delicate balance, not perfect yet, but here are some tips that might help those of you who are facing similar challenges:

1. Maintain open communication with the team and stakeholders. There should be no communication barrier at least among direct reports. And make sure that people are comfortable in discussing anything, especially bad news.
2. Manage expectations, that the road ahead is “perilous” while maintaining a high spirit. Learn from another startup journey and listen to what other people went through before reaching their success might be useful.
3. Take good documentation of every experiment, so we can learn from it and try not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.
4. Take note of every decision made. This is important because what we think is correct for now might not be the case in the future. In the future, people might not understand why we took such a decision (outcome bias).
5. Be prepared to kill & pivot failed initiatives. Sometimes we must admit that it is better to re-allocate the resources to try another thing, take a turn rather than keep pushing forward.
6. Avoid blaming and focus on solutions. It sounds easy, but it is not. It needs practice, personal bonding among team member, and trust.

Ronald Reagan once said in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger accident: “…we learn from our setbacks as well as our successes. And although the lessons of failure are hard, they are often the most important on the road to progress.”

This statement resonates very well with us in MSIGHT. We’re not perfect, we are still learning, and we sometimes fail.

After all, how can we solve a problem if we don’t admit that there is any?

(The original article was published in https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/msight-team-value-our-attitude-towards-failure-aulia-rahma-amin/)