The Value of Intelligent Failures

I grew up in a family in which perfection was believed to be achievable, every day. To make a mistake was an intellectual or moral failing, and usually, both. To do so resulted in shame, sometimes humiliation, and always an urgent desire to avoid mistakes (or at least not talk about them) in the future.

That worldview shifted for me when, over 35 years ago, I distinctly recall a colleague—someone I highly respected, say, “Make mistakes. Lots of them. Just try not to make the same mistakes twice.” This was a revelation. It had not occurred to me that mistakes could be a good thing. Nor that doing so was inherently part of learning, accepting responsibility, and trying to do better next time.

I think we would all agree that a healthy community is not one in which mistakes never happen—that would be impossible anyway. Instead, it is one where people are willing to learn, adapt, and try again, not fearing judgment and reprimand. This kind of culture is especially important for an organization, such as Goosefoot, where our work often involves making decisions in the face of uncertainty in complex contexts: Which ideas are worth investing in? When should we take a risk on something new— or not? And how do we know when something we have tried is no longer the best use of staff and financial resources—and move on?

Amy Edmondson’s research on failure offers an important lesson in this light. She distinguishes between failures that are preventable and those that are “intelligent”. Preventable failures happen when established processes are ignored (or not put in place at the get go), information is overlooked, or known mistakes are repeated. For Goosefoot or any organization, these are the failures we should work hard to prevent. But other failures can occur when we thoughtfully venture into new territory. These are what Edmondson calls “intelligent failures” and can happen when we try something new, carefully consider the risks, and design a measured strategy that we revisit regularly over time.

Since communities face challenges that rarely have simple or proven solutions, we wouldn’t be helping community members discover what is possible, if we only supported what is guaranteed to succeed. On the other hand, if we listen closely, develop a well-thought-out plan about a new idea, identify what success would look like, and establish reasonable boundaries around the risk so that any mistake has the least impact, then we know that even if the program doesn’t produce the hoped-for results, it’s not a wasted investment. That’s what an intelligent failure (or what I prefer to call an intelligent “experiment”) looks like. We not only ask the question “Did it work?”, but “What did we learn?” In that way, the experience generates new knowledge for continually evaluating and refining our next steps.

Two quick examples: When Goosefoot decided in 2009 to take over the enormous space vacated by Casey’s Red Apple Grocer in Bayview Center and establish The Goose Community Grocer, this was a huge financial risk. It took five years for it to start to make a profit. But with concerted planning and effort, we now having a thriving grocery store that serves the community in multiple ways. Similarly, when the Bayview Vision initiative to build affordable housing across SR 525 (or State Route 525) from The Goose hit what seemed at the time an impassable roadblock, that was seen by some as failure. Instead, the connections made there morphed into what is now Island Roots Housing, which completed its first workforce rental affordable housing project in Langley, Generations Place.

The real measure of an organization—or individual—is not how often one gets everything right. It is whether, when something doesn’t go as planned, the experience makes us wiser, more connected, and better prepared to adapt and learn to do even better next time.