No child ever rode a bike, hoping to fall down and scrape a knee. Few of us ever answer a question in the classroom, or attempt to solve a challenge at work, thinking it would be nice to end up with the wrong answer, or stumble upon a series of initially unworkable solutions. Yet, from a willingness to experiment, struggle, and face setbacks and failures which we learn from, we can ultimately develop deeper knowledge of a subject. In the workplace, such an approach allows people and organizations to create and innovate, which will increase the odds of a business surviving and thriving well into the future. Lastly, developing a deep familiarity with this learning and work approach will help employees ensure greater career success in their workplaces.
A recent learning experiment, led in Singapore by Manu Kapur of the National Institution of Education of Singapore, found that “productive failure” may be the most effective approach to learning math. In this study, teachers worked with two groups of students, one of which was taught a concept through a traditional lecture method, while the other group was provided with no instructions or guidance, and instructed to work through the same problem in small groups, failing, and ultimately learning, as they went along. In the end, the teacher for this latter group held a “consolidation lecture” to rehash and review concepts gleaned from the students’ work. These pupils struggled quite a bit early on, but ultimately displayed greater mastery of topics covered, than those who learned through the traditional methods of lecture followed by practice.
In a similar experiment, Kapur found that students who learned through an approach of struggle and experimentation (with minimal initial instruction from their teachers), formed a deeper understanding of concepts they had learned, and a stronger ability to solve unique or challenging problems of the same subject type, than those who were merely taught, and subsequently tested for their mastery. Kapur and his colleagues hypothesized that the process of struggling towards an answer activated those parts of the brain which are geared towards more in-depth learning, forcing students to ultimately form a more meaningful understanding of topics they were presented with.
Other studies have shed further light on how mistakes and failure can improve educational outcomes. John Hattie of the University of Melbourne, Australia, conducted groundbreaking research into what makes schools succeed, and learned that one very effective ingredient for academic success is when “Errors and trust are welcomed as opportunities to learn.” Psychologists Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork of UCLA, discovered that if students were presented with challenging, unfamiliar questions on a test, which they attempted to work through (but were unable to complete successfully), and were then presented with immediate feedback as to the correct answer, they were more likely to retain the information studied, than if they were lectured in the topic beforehand, and followed by completing an exam. The authors summarized these findings as demonstrating that “Incorrect responses..with well-timed feedback…can actually provide the opportunity for more powerful learning.” . Scientific American further described these findings as showing that “learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.”
Learning through experimentation, challenges, mistakes, and eventual success, is also vital for long-term success in life, because it imbues a student with the persistence and resilience needed to fight through the challenges and setbacks which they will inevitably face in their personal journey.
Pioneering research from Angela Lee Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania has found that grit, along with self-control, is a major predictor of long-term success. In Duckworth’s understanding, grit is defined as “being able to sustain your passions, and also work really hard at them, over really disappointingly long periods of time…really pursuing something against all odds.” If students are pushed, from an early age, to understand that struggle, challenge, and initial failure are a part of both learning and life, they can grow more resilient and determined, both as students and human beings. Creating such a learning environment, which doesn’t offer easy answers, but rather, demands critical thinking, is a key means of ensuring that this happens.
Aspects of Duckworth’s findings have been put into practice by prominent educators like Dominic Randolph of the prestigious Riverdale Country School in New York, who argues that “The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure…and in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything.” Meanwhile, David Levin of the KIPP charter school network found that persistence was among the key traits in determining whether former KIPP students finished college, and has found ways to cultivate these traits in KIPP’s curriculum.
By developing a school culture which makes use of the findings of Manu Kapur, or Nate Kornell and his colleagues, we can mold not just better students, but stronger, more resilient people, who see that life will present them with stumbles and struggles, which can be surmounted, as long as they keep discovering and trying. That’s vital for eventual triumph well beyond the classroom, and is a far more useful approach than simply giving students direct instructions, and expecting linear progress (something adult life is strangely reluctant to permit).
A mindset of experimentation, and a willingness to fail (and learn from it) can also have a significant impact in the world of business, allowing companies to progress and grow. Amazon offers an instructive case study in how this happens. In discussing how he built his company, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos argued that “If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.” Towards this end, Amazon has tested projects ranging from television advertising to the service which eventually became Amazon Prime.
Some of these undertakings were failures. Amazon attempted a web search service called A9 as well as sales auctions, and found that neither gained long-term traction. Bezos said he was fine with not having these experiments succeed, noting that “If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.” Bezos expounded further on this philosophy by arguing that a company which conducts a variety of experiments (and measures their results, thus ensuring learning), is more likely to succeed, despite some failures: “Now there are a couple of other things that are essential for innovation and invention that are not as fun. One of them is you have to have a willingness to fail…if you have a willingness to fail, then what you can do is you can ramp up your rate of experimentation.” Clearly, Amazon’s remarkable growth has been driven in major part by this mindset.
Google offers yet another fascinating example of experimentation and failure in action. An analysis by tech blog The Next Web found that 36% of all the products which Google tested or launched (usually through an experimental, beta approach) between 1998 to 2010 were subsequently shuttered. The Next Web praised this experimental approach, arguing that Google’s success “is partially due to throwing a fist full of darts, and seeing what sticks.” Former Apple executive Michael Mace expands on this discussion. Mace believes that Google’s experimental approach is a product of it’s leadership consisting largely of engineers, who hold a deep belief in the power of the scientific method’s ideals of hypotheses, controlled experimentation, and decisions based on data, In a sense, Mace believes, Google functions as “a big bundle of short-term science experiments.”
Perhaps the most well-known example of Google’s exploration-driven culture, discussed in the firm’s 2004 IPO letter, was the concept of having Google employees spend 20% of their time working on projects that “they think will most benefit Google.” Google admitted that “most risky projects fizzle”, but they saw value in such failure, noting that it was often “teaching us something.” Some of those projects, including Gmail, AdSense, and Google News, ended up being major wins for the company.
In the workplace, a culture which allows for innovation through experimentation isn’t merely useful to future growth, but actually, critical for survival. Professor Mark Perry of the University of Michigan — Flint noted that just 12.2% of the corporate giants which appeared on the Fortune 500 in 1955 remained on the list in 2014. Research from Tom Steiner of Baldwin Bell Green and John Davis of Harvard Business School drew even more stark conclusions. A successful American company started in the 1950’s could expect to live for 53 years, while a similarly promising firm, formed in the 1970’s, would last for a much shorter 32 years. For a strong company started in 2010, it’s projected lifespan was a meager 17 years. As Steiner and Davis see it, corporate life cycles will become “shorter and more brutish.”
In this cutthroat environment, businesses must always have new products, services, and strategies in the pipeline, and figure out which of these fresh sparks will best advance their long-term position. Otherwise, they’ll find they’ve been rendered irrelevant, which is a sure sign of impending doom.
Being immersed in this culture of experimentation and learning is crucial to the well-being of the workforce as a whole. The Great Recession decimated millions of jobs, and caused trillions of dollars in aggregate wealth loss for American households. With mergers and acquisitions activity near an all-time peak, employees across many industries face the possibility of being eased out, as a part of efforts to cut costs and improve efficiency. The rise of artificial intelligence , machine learning and robotics may well promise numerous benefits for mankind as a whole, but it also puts a multitude of jobs at greater risk of elimination over the next several years.
Given these circumstances,, there are several strategies which employees ought to master, in order to up their odds of being gainfully employed in the future. One is the ability to quickly master new skills, whether it be a software program or management approach. If, from an early stage in their educational lives, employees learn through the methods discussed earlier, they’ll be more capable of forming deep, lasting mastery of a topic, and will internalize a view that learning something new requires determination, persistence, and falling down a few times.
What’s more, employees who have been immersed in experimental environments at work, will bring to their jobs a mindset of exploration, curiosity, and intelligent risk-taking. With that outlook, these employees can add tremendous value for their employers (just as some Google employees did with their 20% time), and perhaps even start their own businesses in the future, and not depend on the paycheck and whims of their bosses.
The choice is clear. If we wish to grow, as students seeking to become masters of a particular domain, or in our careers, whether working for a big company or launching own startups, we must embrace a mindset of experimentation, persistence, and the life lessons which are derived mainly from mistakes, stumbles and failures. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg said it best: “The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” So, let’s get to it. Scrape a knee or hang up an elbow. Try to solve a problem you aren’t totally familiar with. Make a mistake, and learn from it. Get up, and dust yourself off. It only makes us better.
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