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“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” ~Thomas J. Watson
It’s essential to re-evaluate personal, career, and work goals throughout the year, not just ahead of planned focus meetings with your manager or team. This is often a draining task — gathering data and brainstorming how to offer an elegant solution to a common problem, increasing productivity, alleviating pain points, and executing things differently to provide the most value to your customers.
One additional strategy you must add this year: F**king things up.
Even if your goal is to sustain success, achieve substantial growth, or to exit the “f**king things up train,” implementing this radical strategy can lead you more quickly on the path to success.
1. Reframing “F**king Things Up”
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, relays a parable about perfection. On the first day of a ceramics course, the teacher divided the class into two groups. The left side would be graded on the quantity of the pots they delivered — 40 pounds of pots would earn a “B” and 50 pounds of pots would earn an “A”. The right side of the classroom was told that they would be graded on the quality of their work instead. This group only had to create one perfect pot for an “A”. Can you guess which group actually had the higher quality of work?
It was the group graded on quantity! This group instituted a hands-on approach to create more pieces, from which they were able to learn more quickly from mistakes.
Can you reframe failure into low stakes methods of f**king things up, such as through a minimum viable prototype, training, or assisting a more experienced colleague?
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2. Solidify an F**king Plan
Similar to the quality group, we’re all so afraid of f**king things up — often with good reason! — that we wait too long for implementation. The consequences of failure are real — we can damage our relationships with friends and family, suffer financially, or even get fired from our jobs.
Planning on f**king things up does not involve a hands-off or “winging it” approach, but a scope, schedule, and metrics for a risk-managed proposal. Set small, achievable processes to support your broader objective.
Processes ultimately answer the question, “How does one eat an elephant?” one bite at a time.
In the field of project management, teams develop detailed lists of tasks that are required to deliver project requirements. Try using this method to break down your high-level goal into manageable tasks that are acceptable to eff up. A simple example of this would be that if your goal is to lose 10 pounds in 3 months, one task to achieve this goal could be to remove bread from 2 out of 3 of your meals. If you resolve to try this for 4 days and f**k this up, you can then pivot to try a new task, such as resolving to add the requirement to eat 1 vegetable and 1 fruit before considering eating bread.
Consider an agile f**king up strategy that schedules time for hands-on learning, beta testing, or shadowing a more experienced colleague. Decide upon a scope, how data will be gathered and measured, timing for f**king up, and decision points. Risk assessments and appetite for risk should always be the cornerstone of your plan for f**king things up.
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3. Communicate Your F**king Plan
Watson replied, “Not at all, young man; we have just spent a couple of million dollars educating you.”
After experiencing this response to failure, how hard do you think that junior executive worked on his next project at IBM? As news of this spread throughout the organization, Watson built a culture based on the message, “Don’t be afraid to take risks in pursuit of innovation; you won’t be punished if you fail.” It is no surprise that IBM dominated the computer industry under Watson’s leadership.
To implement this cultural change of “f**king things up for success,” it’s essential to communicate that f**king things up is acceptable to your team, and obtain their buy-in for this proposal. Schedule the time to incorporate feedback and additional risks, especially if your manager or key decision makers are uncomfortable with a plan that includes managed failure.
Building a plan for f**king things up this year is not an easy task, but one that can lead you to achieve success more quickly. It involves reframing f**king things up, thinking through the breakdown of your objective into smaller tasks, and communicating that f**king up is okay to your team and obtaining support for your plan. While it may feel that you’re f**king up on your goals, you are succeeding at many small ones to ultimately build your strategies for success.
So, if you want to move faster on your path to success, you should consider: f**king up things early, f**king up things often, and don’t be afraid to try many small things and learn from f**king up. When tasked with a large problem or goal, ask yourself, “What am I going to f**k up on this to implement success faster?”
