10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, ignition sequence start, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0…and we have a lift off! The fourth launch of Starship and the Super Heavy Booster took place on National Day. As a sci-fi and tech guy, I have long followed the developments that SpaceX has made. There is so much to say about their work, but in this week’s letter I thought I would focus on their attitude towards failure. SpaceX is not afraid to fail in business development. Last Thursday’s launch was the fourth of the entire rocket, consisting of the booster part itself. That is, the part that makes the rocket leave the Earth’s main gravity. And then the Starship, the part that will carry cargo and people to the Moon and Mars. It sits on top of the booster. This launch was the fourth and, like the previous three, a test. Prior to this, there have been a number of launches with just the booster section to test it. The test is to try something specific and to collect data on the whole launch.
SpaceX has unprecedented speed
Several complete rockets have been built and launched with the knowledge that they will most likely just break up. Testing may seem completely logical, and NASA also did this at one time when they were active in developing rockets. The big difference is that SpaceX has a pace that has never been seen before in these contexts. The whole effort is that they go on and build and test, build and test, over and over again. It costs a ton of money to build these whole rockets. The idea is that it’s cheaper overall to build them and send them up now, in quick succession, than the overall cost of being too cautious and maybe facing a big failure at the end. We can learn from this when it comes to our improvement efforts. It is almost always better to develop and then try, to learn and then do again and better. All the time in a series.
Failure in business development
You will “fail” in your business development, where there will be things that do not work as intended, but note the quotation marks around “fail”. Because actually you have had success. Success because you dared and because you have now learned a lot along the way. With the new knowledge and the positive feeling of being on the way forward, you then take the next step and do the same; try again. You are constantly learning things that you would never have learned if you did not dare to try.
“Those who do not dare to take the next step, easily end up standing on one leg”
– Chinese proverb.
In an organization where it is not allowed to make mistakes, it is easy to become mentally locked and not dare to try. If you are punished in some way when you make a mistake, you are reluctant to try. Initiative is taken away from you and you wait and see. This is an enormous cost and an enormous potential that you miss out on. I see it over and over again in so many organizations. What is it like in your organization; is the cost of failure higher than the benefit of taking an initiative? In our Certified Improvement Leader and Certified Business Designer courses, we teach the importance of keeping up the pace and trying things out. The experience and knowledge you gain from trying almost always exceeds the price you pay for waiting for the perfect solution. Of course, there are times when we shouldn’t take chances, like when life and health are at stake. But most of the time, when it comes to our improvement work, we are not even close to the kind of critical things that can happen if things go wrong, and then caution harms our progress.
What is the worst that can happen?
Often the worst that can happen is that a customer calls and complains, or that a colleague has to do something again, or similar. Here, it is good to work preventively by informing various stakeholders that you are developing in the area. Once this has been done, most people who may experience something negative are content to just move on with their lives. Back to SpaceX. Launch number three ended with the spacecraft crashing on re-entry into the atmosphere. This was widely reported by the media as a failure.
At the same time, everyone who was more familiar with the issue cheered.
You will suffer similar when you now use the test-learn principle. The uninitiated or those who don’t want you to succeed will point that out:
- you have failed,
- that you have made mistakes, and
- that the improvement work you are doing should be stopped as soon as possible.
But then you know better and take it easy, because you have learned a lot and you will do things even better next time.
Below you can see what SpaceX employees look like when others write about their failures. Not much of a trace of failure in these mines.
As my friend Anita, with whom I’ve worked for a long time, used to say: “we must dare to jump!”.
Dare to jump
So the question for you this week is: do you dare to jump? Do you dare to take the risk that everything is not perfect and that someone might get a little annoyed that something is not working as it should? Dare to fail in business development?
I hope so. Because the sooner you ‘fail’, the sooner you move forward. No one can predict all the variables over a long period of time, but you need to test yourself, in a real environment, with real people involved.
