On failure and creative leadership

Made by Many arrived back from Austin on Thursday after five days of rather intense thought and debate at SXSWi.

I attended a range of sessions on communication, cross-channel storytelling, creativity, and so on. One of the things I noticed over the course of the conference was the development of several themes. I don’t think this was a deliberate move by speakers and organisers; rather, I think the community as a whole is talking about these things right now.

Two of these themes — failure and creative leadership — are especially relevant to this project and the community of business start-ups, and for that reason I’d like to unpack them here. Any comments are very, very welcome — this is designed to start conversations rather than lay down an edict of how things should be!

1. Failing doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed

This isn’t a new idea, but it’s one I heard a lot about over the week. Companies — and specifically, company leaders — need to rethink the concept of failure and make it ok to fail. This isn’t to say we should make it ok to fritter money away on bad ideas, but we should become more willing to embrace risk and — hand in hand with that — to admit when something isn’t working, so we can move on to something that just might. As the founder of one start-up put it,

“Failure is the best way to discover an idea was less than ideal and realise you’re better off with the next one. It’s a good thing.”

Another speaker pointed out that while, several years ago, VC firms used to dread the start-up that had failed several times. Now, though, they are more likely to fund that start-up :

“They’ve been out there trying things — they’re hungry for it and they’re doing everything they can to find the idea that works. It’s more likely that their next idea will work.”

For small businesses, like the ones we aim to help with this service, failure must be an acceptable option. It is a fact that no one always chooses the right approach. When you choose the wrong one, you must allow yourself to acknowledge that it’s wrong and try something new. The only alternative is to waste time, talent and money on something that isn’t working. Not only is this lunacy, but it’s also impractical, as few small businesses can afford to throw money at a problem in the (vain) hope it will go away. As no less a thinker than Clay Shirky said,

“We should measure an insitution’s strength by the ability to react and change, not endure.”

2. Creative leadership is a vital precondition to success

There is a condition called Executive Director Disease. It is most prevalent in larger organisations, governments and non-profits, but as this is a highly contagious condition, it does surface from time to time in smaller businesses and even the odd start-up. EDD is indicated by a need to keep control over ideas and a general preference for closed communications. It can be fatal if left unchecked.

EDD is the very opposite of creative leadership, which is a little bit scary but a lot more conducive to success. As one person put it,

“Creative leadership is where the person in charge says ‘Here’s where we want to go, now get us there any way you think we can’ instead of unilaterally charting a path and setting out on it at a fixed pace.”

37signals is a company that practices this kind of creative leadership. A lot of companies that talk about being agile do this. But there is a huge opportunity for smaller companies to take this further and create a new norm where leadership is more of a process than an institution, and where creativity is fostered as a likely source of time-saving and money-saving or even profit-making ideas, rather than a begetter of weeds in a manicured garden.

Parting comment

Maybe this is all really obvious stuff, I don’t know. But these ideas seemed to reverberate throughout the week, and they developed as more people joined the conversations and added their own takes. For the people we’re working to help, right now — small and medium-sized businesses that want to grow overseas — these might just be useful thinking points.

As I said before, all feedback is welcome.