Learning from failure

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Learning from failure

Contents

Introduction (Walt Crawford)

We tend to share successes, perhaps not as often or as well as we could. We tend not to share failures. I suspect many of us even avoid the word itself, preferring "qualified success" or "learning experience" or "premature innovation" or...

For now, let's define Failure as:

An initiative or process that was either terminated before a planned ending date or that failed to achieve the stated goals.

I'll assert that any good failure is indeed a learning experience, and that we may learn more from failure than from success. I'll also assert that the library field would be stronger if we shared our failures.

Meredith Farkas created the estimable Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki, usually known as Library Success Wiki. Farkas agrees that we should share our failures. I've started a Learning from failure page there with hopes that people will contribute--I thought Library Failures: A Learning Experience Wiki was doomed from the start.

Farkas offers her own thoughts on "Sharing the bad stuff, learning from failures":

Sharing the bad stuff, learning from failures (Meredith Farkas)

Originally appeared in somewhat different form as a December 16, 2007 post at Information wants to be free. Used and adapted by permission.

There are some libraries that most of us think must be the best places to work ever because of the innovation that goes on there. And in some cases, we may be right. But not always. I think we often assume that places that have good people are good places to work, and that doesn’t necessarily follow. Some people may be innovating in spite of their place of work. I only learned this when I talked to someone who’d left a job at a library I thought must be “utopia” and discovered that it was anything but. However, you’d never know it from that person’s blog.

Obviously, we walk a fine line when we blog about work. I think we all find the line that works for us and our colleagues and avoid crossing it. There’s no one-size-fits-all standard, because some places of work would be furious if you even criticized a vendor and others are very cool with radical transparency. I worry though when I see people making assumptions about someone’s place of work based on what they did (or more importantly didn’t) blog. Someone whose goal was to work in a library developing “killer apps” once wanted to work at my library because they figured if I was there it must be an innovative place. I’m not saying we’re not change agents at my library (because we are; I’m always impressed by how open to change my colleagues are), but we’re not high enough on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to have an employee who just develops killer apps. Even our Electronic Resources Librarian also teaches English 101 classes, works reference and has a liaison area.

Why do I blog? I blog to start a dialog and to bring up issues I’m having in the hopes that it will help others. I’ve written about the problems I had with performance anxiety in the past because I know there are a lot of people who think it’s an insurmountable problem (heck, I did). I wrote about ALA and martyrdom because I knew there were other people feeling like maybe they’re a bad librarian for not wanting to spend their hard-earned money to participate in ALA (because I have). When I present on wikis, I often talk about my early failures with wikis at work because they offer some good lessons about how to ensure staff buy-in (I sure learned a few). Maybe it’s the former psychotherapist in me who still likes to help people in this way, even if it makes me look less “perfect.” There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re the only person going through something. Just knowing that someone else is going through what you’re going through is often enough to keep you from falling into the well of self-blame, self-pity and bitterness. Hearing other people’s stories has been helpful to me too. Thanks to those of you who’ve shared them publicly and privately with me.

I think it’s important that we find ways to talk about “the tough stuff.” So many people are feeling the same things and have no one to share it with. Some may think they’re the only person going through this in their career and may perhaps blame themselves for something that just is a reality in our profession. Someone may fail at something and get so discouraged that they never try again (not realizing that a lot of the most successful people have failed time and again). I’m not entirely sure why I get spammed by Dyson, but one of the e-mails I got from them was entitled James Dyson on Celebrating Failure:

When an everyday product doesn’t work properly, our scientists and engineers do something about it. They develop prototypes, and test. Develop new ideas, and test again. And again. And many times they fail. But it’s through those failures they learn even more, inventing better technologies that no one else has thought of before. This was James Dyson’s process in his original workshop, and is the process he leads today.

Man, if only all of my spam was so inspirational! We should write about and celebrate our failures. We should brainstorm with others and figure out what we could have/should have done differently so that we’ll do better next time. When we’re embarrassed about our failures or sweep them under the rug, we’re depriving ourselves and others of a valuable learning experience.

Alan Kirk Gray mentioned at Computers in Libraries 2007 that there should be a Library Failures Wiki, since we learn so much more from our failures than our successes. I have to agree (though I’ll let someone else create that one). It’s the times that things went wrong (both with technologies and my career) that I’ve learned the most from. But will people be as willing to share their failures as they are to share their successes? Probably not, and I find that unfortunate.

Failure isn’t sexy. Disclosing problems isn’t good for your brand. I’ve been given advice to think about my brand when I write a post. “My brand” is human being, with strengths and weaknesses and just as many issues as everyone else. Sure, I could only write the good stuff. I could create a Meredith Farkas brand that is always 100% positive and only focused on the good things I do, but would that be me? And if I got a job based on a brand I’ve created online that doesn’t reflect the reality of who I am on a day-to-day basis, I think everyone involved would end up disappointed (including me). This blog is me and I am this blog. I think anyone who has met me in person would agree that I’m not shockingly different than how you pictured me (other than not being as tall… for some reason people seem to expect me to be tall).

Dorothea Salo wrote an incredibly honest post yesterday reflecting on her year (a year with lots of really impressive accomplishments) and her anxiety about the future of the area of our profession she’s hitched her star to:

I’d be a perfectly happy camper… if I didn’t have the nagging sense that the world is passing institutional repositories by, and me along with them. We’re just not where the action is right now, not in preservation and not in open access. Mind, I’m not worried about open access; it’s doing just dandy these days. I’m not even worried (much) about green open access; disciplinary repositories are popping up like mushrooms and growing like weeds. But I’m not an open-access advocate at MPOW, just a repository-rat—and it’s a damn big ship I’m on, and I’m one very small rat... Ah, well. I’m still working on this being-stuck business. When I have something, I’ll let everybody know. In the meantime… it’s been quite a year.

I applaud Dorothea for her bravery in sharing some very difficult feelings about the place she’s at now in her career. I’d be willing to bet that she is not the only person feeling stuck like this in the niche she’s created for herself in the profession. I’ll bet lots of people feel that way and maybe if they read her post, they’ll feel a little less alone. Maybe they’ll e-mail her and will be able to share ideas and support each other. Maybe someone will offer her useful advice. Dorothea could have kept this all to herself… could have never admitted to these anxieties, but in writing this, she opens up the possibilities for people offering help and support as well as the possibility that what she’s writing could support others.

I know it isn’t always easy--or possible--to share the difficult issues in our career. There have been times that I’ve gotten burned (not in my day-job) by organizations that I just couldn’t write about because it would have gone over the line I’ve put up for my own blogging. There have been things that I didn’t share because I didn’t think it would serve anyone but me to write about it (and I don’t see my blog as a space to just vent — that’s what spouses are for!). But when we can, we should try to share our failures and difficulties as well as our successes. Things don’t always come easy for me. Though I do feel incredibly lucky, I’ve worked for everything I’ve had and I’ve had plenty of bumps and frustrations along the way. We need to share those bumps, if only to encourage others and to make people feel a little less alone (though often just reading one’s own reflections can lead to greater insight). We can all learn from the hard stuff.

Comments and reactions

  • [Walt Crawford:] I certainly agree that we can learn more from “failure stories” than success stories, at least in some cases–-and I’ve urged people to tell their unsuccess stories on the Library Success wiki. Does it happen much? No. Will it? Probably not. I certainly understand why people don’t want to talk about failures, even when they’re really “failures”–-false starts and directions that had to be changed after recognizing a problem. (Would I be more likely than others to discuss failures? Probably not.) It’s even hard to write about negative successes: That is, cases where you succeed by not doing the wrong thing. I’ve had a few of those in the past, and while I’m proud of them, it’s a perverse pride that’s truly hard to share...particularly when those advocating for an unworkable solution usually don’t, in their heart of hearts, believe it was unworkable.
  • ["Kelly," edited excerpts:] As far as sharing failures--it can be politically fraught. I once had a poster accepted to a small library conference that would have showed the challenges in implementing a digital library and collaborative space. I was not overly negative, but my employer ended up nixing the project because they felt that showing they had challenges put them in a bad light! People in the knowledge management area often have this very same issue--people take these efforts quite personally, and so often employers will not permit challenges to be shared... This is a widespread cultural issue. I think it is changing at the grassroots level, in that more people want to share, but it may take time before they feel able to share.
  • Steve Campion posted "Sharing the bad" on December 20, 2007 at LibraryStream, responding to Farkas' post. Excerpts: "We need to share failures in the workplace. The library community needs to hear what doesn’t work in addition to what does. We need to learn from each other, good or bad. Expressing the bad isn’t always easy, though... Transparent libraries are still rare. If you speak on behalf of an organization, you have to watch your tongue. Even if you speak independently, you often feel obligated to err on the side of caution... I like Alan Kirk Gray’s suggestion of a Library Failures Wiki. It could be a valuable tool allowing us to share common problems. More people might contribute and more experiences might be exchanged if anonymity was part of the forum. Our objective wouldn’t be to embarrass our libraries, after all, but to help improve them. Getting publicly specific about failure isn’t always the best course when the culture in which you work is not yet transparent."

Tolerating risk (Alan Kirk Gray)

In her post, Meredith Farkas linked to Alan Kirk Gray's blog. Here's the post in which he suggests a Library Failures Wiki. Excerpts from the post:

For many of us, it's far better to avoid a potential problem--some kind of failure--even though it means passing up the likelihood of greater success. What does that yield? Rules that cause hardship for all patrons because of the actions of a few... Could it be that complex cataloging rules and hand-crafting mean that we can find what we're looking for all the time...and we never want to fail, even if that means our patrons are missing the ease of use that Amazon gives them?
Pick the greatest peeve you have with your library and think about how it could be remedied if you were willing to bear the possibility that you might screw up when you tried to fix it. You know what, we need a Library Failures wiki more than we need a list of successful best practices. I bet we would learn more... Look around your risk-free library and see if you can't find some uncertainty to dive into.

Negative success stories (Walt Crawford)

In my comment on Farkas' post, I mentioned "negative success"--cases where you succeed by not doing something badly. That's a particularly tough area, given that the whole concept is out of joint with the idea of trying everything you can and hoping that some of it succeeds.

By negative success, I do not mean deciding not to do a library blog because lots of other blogs haven't achieved loads of community buyin. If your library has some reason to try a blog, even if it might not be a wild success, failure to try it is fear of uncertainty. Try it: You really have very little to lose.

No, I mean cases where there's a lot to lose and the project itself requires a massive commitment of resources. In those cases, it's worth doing some clear long-term analysis; sometimes, you find that the project is inherently doomed to failure, at least the way it's currently designed.

Can I provide examples? Not really. Even for organizations that no longer exist, the veil of secrecy is sometimes appropriate. I can say this: Negative success is only a good thing when it truly avoids predictable disaster--e.g., not adding a new startup routine to your personal computer when, with some thought and analysis, you can see that the routine will send your computer into an infinite loop, leaving no resources to do any other work and not allowing you to back it out.

We're not going to share examples of negative success. But we can--we should--be able to share examples of ordinary "failure"--things that didn't go as well as you would have liked or even had to be shut down. If those failures are clearly and honestly described, we can learn a lot from them. That, of course, makes them successes of a sort.

Over to you

Alan Kirk Gray suggested a Library Failures Wiki in September 2006. He repeated the suggestion at Computers in Libraries 2007.

There is no such wiki. Until today, there wasn't even a "failures" page in the Library Success wiki. I guess that's an indication of just how hard it is for us to share failure stories.

But you're all leaders here, or expect to be some day. Leaders learn from failure. Can you share them?

Oh, and if you have a story you're willing to share but really can't attach your name to it--well, send it to me with appropriate explanation. I'll add it here (and, if appropriate, at the Library Success wiki) as an anonymous contribution. That's less helpful, of course--you can hardly provide links to show the nature of a "partial success"--but it's better than nothing.

Related articles and resources

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