Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner

by Anjali Sastry, Kara Penn

Overview

If you’re aiming to innovate, failure along the way is a given. But can you fail better?

Whether you’re rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful.

In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works, in three steps:
1. Launch every innovation project with the right groundwork
2. Build and refine ideas and products through iterative action
3. Identify and embed the learning

Fail Better teaches you how to design your efforts to test the boundaries of your thinking, explore crucial interdependencies, and find the factors that can shift results from just acceptable to groundbreaking—or even world-changing. Practical instructions intertwined with compelling real-world examples show you how to:
• Make predictions and map system relationships ahead of time so you can better assess results
• Establish how much failure you can afford
• Prioritize project activities for disconfirmation and iteration
• Learn from every action step by collecting and examining the right data
• Support efficient, productive habits to link action and reflection
• Distill, share, and embed the lessons from every success and failure

You may be a Fortune 500 manager, scrappy start-up innovator, social impact visionary, or simply leading your own small project. If you aim to break through without breaking the bank—or ruining your reputation—this book is for you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781422193457
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	10/14/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	682 KB

About the Author

Anjali Sastry is senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research investigates global health delivery and management, applying systems thinking and practical, business-based approaches in low-resource settings. She has conducted numerous field studies and collaborative action projects in Africa and Asia and advises and teaches internationally.

Kara Penn is cofounder and principal consultant at Mission Spark, where she works on the front lines of practical management to implement new approaches in complex settings. She has led award-winning community collaboratives; designed, managed, and evaluated multiyear social change initiatives; and guided more than sixty NGOs, social enterprises, corporations, and foundations. Several prestigious fellowship programs, including Coro, Watson, and Forté, have recognized her leadership and community contributions.

Anjali Sastry is senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research investigates global health delivery and management, applying systems thinking and practical, business-based approaches in low-resource settings. She has conducted numerous field studies and collaborative action projects in Africa and Asia and advises and teaches internationally.

Kara Penn is cofounder and principal consultant at Mission Spark, where she works on the front lines of practical management to implement new approaches in complex settings. She has led award-winning community collaboratives; designed, managed, and evaluated multiyear social change initiatives; and guided more than sixty NGOs, social enterprises, corporations, and foundations. Several prestigious fellowship programs, including Coro, Watson, and Forté, have recognized her leadership and community contributions.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I The Antidote to Failure

1 Failures Are Inevitable 15

Failures, Small and Good, Big and Bad 16

It's Not You, It's the System Complexity 18

The Benefits of Accepting That You Will Fail 24

Projects Are the Crucible 27

2 Three Steps for Harnessing Failure 31

The Fait Better Method 34

Failing Better Is Not Easy, but Its Rewards Are Clear 45

3 Charting Your Fail Better Path 47

Advice for Using This Book 47

Taking Your First Steps to Implement the Method 50

Part II Fail Better: Step-by-Step

4 Launch Your Project 59

Launches Often Miss the Mark, but You Can Do Better 60

Link Actions to Outcomes 63

Marshal Your Resources 81

Build Your Team 87

To Sum Up Our Launch Advice: Inspiration and Guidance 92

5 Iterate to Build and Refine 109

The Power of Iteration 112

Plan the Action 114

Take Action 127

Make a Decision 130

To Sum Up Our Iteration Advice: Inspiration and Guidance 137

6 Embed the Learning 151

Extracting the Lessons from Experience 152

Examine Your Results 154

Enhance Your Practices 166

Share Your Discoveries 174

To Sum Up Our Embed Advice: Inspiration and Guidance 181

Part III Moving from Ideas to Practice

7 Developing Your Mind-Set for Implementation 199

Helpfulness 201

Talking about Failures as They Happen 206

Managing Time Frames 209

Resilience 217

Concluding Thoughts 221

8 Our Design-for-Learning Foundations 225

The Only Benefit of Failing Is Your Learning 226

Calibrated Challenges 228

Freedom and Safety 234

Meaningful Feedback 237

Concluding Thoughts 243

9 Practical Fail-to-Succeed Lessons from a Frugal Innovator 245

Delivering Low-Cost Health Interventions to Many 248

The Maternal Health Challenge 249

IMNCS-The Rural Program 250

Manoshi-The Urban Program 253

Concluding Thoughts: What BRAC Reveals about Failing Better 261

10 Fail Better Can Change the World 265

Our Own Journey 265

ReThink Health: Stewardship, Organizing, and System Dynamics 267

The US Civil Rights Movement: Iterative Action, Scaled Failures, Reflective Practice 271

Build on the Lessons, Use the Method, and Initiate Larger-Scale Change 280

Start Today 283

Notes 289

Index 301

Acknowledgments 315

About the Authors 317

Editorial Reviews

“Top 11 Books to Watch for Q4.” — 250 Words (250words.com)

ADVANCE PRAISE for Fail Better:

Sachin H. Jain, Lecturer, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School; former Senior Advisor, Health Care Reform, Obama Administration—
“In corporations, governments, academic organizations, and nonprofits, there is a desperate need for leaders willing to boldly experiment, thoughtfully learn from failures, and refocus their efforts—yet few actually do. In this important book, Sastry and Penn show us how.”

Simon Johnson, coauthor, 13 Bankers and White House Burning—
“Fail Better is a brilliant antidote to most management thinking. You are going to fail. The question is: Can you fail better, learn from your mistakes, and get closer to where you need to be? If you’re committed to improving health care, or passionate about the economic development in poorer countries—or if you’ve ever tried anything, really—this is a must-read.”

Una S. Ryan, Chair, Bay Area BioEconomy Initiative—
“There are some clear choices in life: fail to learn or learn to fail. Although it’s not hard to make the right choice, it is hard to find a map for turning individual mistakes into the stepping stones of a mission-driven journey. Thankfully, Sastry and Penn offer us clear footprints to follow and even tell us how to customize the path to our own unique needs. New entrepreneurs and old hands alike will marvel at the sense and sensibility of their project-driven approach. May everyone’s passion and mission benefit from this tour de force.”

Anuj Pasrija, Head of Group Social Business, Novartis—
“Failures, whether at the office or in our personal lives, evoke fear of rejection. No wonder we often conceal or ignore them, even though we shouldn’t. That’s why Fail Better is so useful. It’s a practical guide that will help you and your company manage failures while turning them into opportunities that could eventually lead to much greater successes.”

Desh Deshpande, Trustee, Deshpande Foundation; Life Member, MIT Corporation—
“When failure is inevitable in the innovation economy, weeding out useless failures is a an efficient way to succeed. Anjali and Kara show a practical way to do it.”

Natalie Givens, Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton—
“As a veteran in technology and management consulting for 30 years, I found value in the reminder that it's up to me to create the environment for success through deliberate planning, learning, and feedback. These lessons apply in business and life."

From the Publisher