In Defense of Reason

Friday, June 25, 2010

Yesterday Umair Haque tweeted several bits of counterintuitive advice that I would encourage nobody other than my competition to follow. Among them:

But the worst, without question — the one that really got under my skin — is the notorious cliche:

Most celebrate success, and criticize failure. That’s 100% backwards. Do the opposite, and your edge will be 100x sharper.

Ahh yes, the success-is-the-enemy paradox.

Quotes like these get lots of attention in the startup world because they are shockingly contrarian and counterintuitive. Paul Krugman once explained this method of distinguishing oneself:

For a long time, there’s been an accepted way for commentators on politics and to some extent economics to distinguish themselves: by shocking the bourgeoisie, in ways that of course aren’t really dangerous. Ann Coulter is making sense! Bush is good for the environment! You get the idea.

The problem is that eventually, it does get dangerous. He continues:

Clever snark like this can get you a long way in career terms — but the trick is knowing when to stop. It’s one thing to do this on relatively inconsequential media or cultural issues. But if you’re going to get into issues that are both important and the subject of serious study, like the fate of the planet, you’d better be very careful not to stray over the line between being counterintuitive and being just plain, unforgivably wrong.

The “celebrate failure” example of contrarianism is dangerous because it directly threatens the goals and ambitions that startups struggle with. If you’re running a startup, you will fail plenty. You needn’t obsess over it, let alone strive for it — or worst of all, as Umair asks us to do — “criticize” yourself when you successfully avert it.

This contrarian thinking should be taken exactly as seriously as I would be if I declared we should look to the west to see the sun rise, or that we should seek salt to quench our thirst.

At SXSWi 2010, Jason Fried concluded his speech with “‘Fail often’ is probably the worst advice I’ve ever heard” (I don’t have a link to that, but here’s a similar tweet). I agree. All of my successes in life have come from drive and determination to succeed. Whether it was as big an undertaking as climbing Denali or as small an undertaking as writing this blog post, I’ve succeeded by seeking and thinking about success. On the flip side, my worst experiences have come when I dwelled on or romanticized failure.

Josh Bokardo points out that rather than “celebrating failure,” we should “celebrate learning.” Brad Feld has written several astute posts on improving on failure, covering his own experiences and arguing that it’s better to fail quickly than slowly and that failure is often worthy of introspection. These are all excellent points, none of which advocate the bizarre philosophy of striving to fail repeatedly.

If you’re going to talk about the virtues of failure or any other counterintuitive concept, please follow the Brad Feld strategy of reason, and avoid the Umair Haque strategy of shocking contrarianism.

Now you go:

10 comments:

  1. Friday, June 25, 2010Umair says:

    Ha.

    OK, then let's also not follow the Robby Grossman strategy of thin reading, egocentricity, and invalid comparison.

    Let's handle those in reverse order.

    You're comparing a tweet of mine to several blog posts by others. Sounds a little unbalanced to me, considering the character limit.

    Second, this tweet might not have spoken to you for a reason. I speak to all kinds of organizations. Many *aren't* startups. They're decidedly less comfortable with failure than might be de rigueur (or not) in the venturescape.

    Third, I've discussed at length, in pretty stark economic terms, where and when failure is powerful (and where and when it isn't). Where? On my blogs. A better comparison – and a more interesting reading – might have started there.

    The other tweets you're citing don't, of course, have anything with the first.

    Frankly, I see the idea of failure as about as controversial as a glass of warm milk. You're certainly free to disagree – but a more cogent argument might help your case.

    Cheers,

    Umair

  2. Friday, June 25, 2010Kathysierra says:

    Much as I appreciate a lot of Umair's work, I have to agree with you on this post. The whole “celebrate failure” thing is — in my opinion — not just *bad* advice, but damn near dangerous. There's starting to be some pretty strong evidence that not only do our brains learn more specifically from success than failure, but also that we are far more likely to produce results and create changes by studying what *works* rather than what does not.

    Most of the successful large animal (and marine life) trainers understand that rewarding “successive approximation” is the key… we ignore the behavior that doesn't work (i.e. “failure”) and reinforce/celebrate/reward what *does*. I get that the phrase “celebrate failure” is an attempt to work around the serious fear of failure that leaves individuals and companies too risk-averse to function well (let alone be innovative), but it's still… wrong.

    To swing from “punish failure” to “celebrate failure” is going way too far. We should do what the brain has been found to do when we fail (except in cases of SPECTACULAR or dangerous failure) — we should mostly ignore it and continue seeking out what DOES work. One of the best ways to succeed is to train ourselves to spot even the subtlest successes and analyze THOSE and amplify THOSE and build on THOSE.

    As an employee, sure, I'd much rather my “failures” be celebrated than punished, but drawing any attention to it at ALL still makes me cringe, no matter how much we try to “learn” from it. Many people are just as–if not more–risk-averse knowing their failures will be under the spotlight, no matter how much it is spun as a “learning opportunity”. But again, those who give this advice are attempting to solve a very real and serious problem, and I respect that. I just don't think this is the most productive path to solving the problem of risk-aversion, and it's definitely NOT the most productive path for learning.

    As for the advice on mastery, I assume he means don't just keep doing stuff faster without stopping to consider WHAT you're doing, but… mastery is not about “faster” OR “stillness”. It's about continuing to work your ass off *in the right/deliberate ways*, constantly pushing the edge to get better and better and better performance. We have LOADS of science about mastery/expertise, and as far as I've seen in the research, “sitting stiller” is pretty much the way to master “sitting stiller”. But again, he's using this as a metaphor and I understand that. I'm as guilty as the next person — and probably far guiltier than Umair — of using overly simplistic metaphors that are just as likely to mislead as inspire or educate.

    I blame Twitter ; ) It takes more than 140 chars to insert the appropriate disclaimers and thoughtful context.

  3. Friday, June 25, 2010freerobby says:

    Great points, Kathy. In particular, I think your “positive reinforcement”
    argument is an excellent one for making this case. Thanks for posting.

  4. Friday, June 25, 2010@harrylyme says:

    what I find most insidious about @umairh's sermons — is that he, imo, intentionally plays to an audience that is about as far removed from the spirit of enterprise, entrepreneurship, and even the most basic features of the creative process — than he is.

    Your insight on his attempt at passing off his formulaic contrarianism — as profound insight, is spot on.

    Haque's article work-flow is equally as obvious: grab yesterdays newspaper — pick three winner and three losers. Then pretend to know why it should have been obvious because the formula for success was contained in one of his “manifestos” and his “new and improved” adjectives and rhyme schemes, and then say thing like ~”be more like Gandhi and less like Hitler” — and reassure the “If I'm so smart — why aren't I successful” crowd that their lack of progress is not due to a lack of daring or courageousness, much less talent but because, in the 20th century, their moral superiority worked against them vs the evil forces of Capitalism.

    But that will all change in the 21 century — so long as you follow the new adjectives and memorize the jingles contained in the Manifesto gospels :)

    And then points to Walmart as the finest example of the New Edgy, “Do Better” 21century business innovator :D

  5. Friday, June 25, 2010Sachin Agarwal says:

    There was a great NYTimes article applying animal training techniques regarding success and failure to humans, or at least husbands: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25lov…

  6. Friday, June 25, 2010Harrylyme says:

    Umair i think it's the shallow moralistic almost fortune cookie like pros that are turning people off. You're reputation for being a “Fluff Slinger” didn't begin with Robby.

    And to simply respond to all criticism with the refrain (words2effect) “If You didn't Get it you either didn't read my manifestos — or more likely — you aren't very intelligent — so buzz off” — that near boilerplate response to all criticism — is symptomatic of the very height of morbid self-absorption.

    But more to the point: your sermons are big on Umar Haque Branding (Manifestos, Awesomness, rhyming letters and absolute moral judgments) — but light on substance, logically inconsistent, devoid of originality, and just plain wrong. And actually, as others have noted, your advice, if followed — is a formula for failure.

    You apologized for your sxsw disaster — where, essentially, many real Edge ecomomy players came to the same conclusions on your “Fluff Slinging” as others have here.

    Why be so duplicitous in your reply now? Why not vigorously defend yourself then? Were you worried about your lecture business? Sucking up under the public spot-light? :)

    If only this — can you answer these questions:
    what are your academic credentials? And we've heard you drop the @HarvardBiz thing (Stuttering-John-Gig), but can you name a single significant company that has actually benefited from your advice? Any at all? Do you have any real world experience in business at all?

  7. Friday, June 25, 2010Laura @Pistachio Fitton says:

    3 thoughts…

    wikipedia tells us the first true ascent of Denali took at least 10 years of (recorded) failed attempts. the route attempted in 1903 was not successfully climbed until 1963. lots of failing has to happen before success can scale.

    the SF area's productive celebration of failure became clear to me about 3/4 of the way through the process of starting oneforty when a friend asserted i was “set” no matter what happened at that point. i was shocked – “but if i don't _____ (whatever the next step was) i will have totally failed.” “but you will be snapped up to work on something else because of the risks you took in getting this far.” that's what celebrate failure means to me, and that's bloody f*cking important to true progress.

    if you don't like “fail fast” how about Esther Dyson's variant “make NEW mistakes.”

  8. Friday, June 25, 2010Laura @Pistachio Fitton says:

    um, 2 thoughts.

    #FAIL

  9. Friday, June 25, 2010Umair says:

    Thanks, fantastic points.

    With humility, let me suggest that a little too much is being read into a single word in a single, off-the-cuff tweet – “celebrated”. Let's put it in context.

    I followed up the failure tweet with one a few mins later, explaining why I think it matters: because it asks orgs to unlearn. Which is something big orgs have a great amount of trouble with (just ask GM). And perhaps ties up, a little bit, with Kathy's points above.

    So why is that not cited – or debated – by Robby here? Nor any of my various posts discussing “successful” failure – cheap, fast, quick, failure, under specific economic conditions? Why is Robby singling out a tweet, when I've written plenty more in-depth about this topic? Let me suggest that the point is considerably more nuanced than it's made out to be here (try this, for starters: http://bit.ly/8NCq0w).

    That hints at a thin, selective reading – one that builds a caricature of me, instead of getting into the meat of what I actually said.

    I liked Pistachio's points – nicely noted.

    Cheers,

    Umair

    PS: As for 'sitting stiller” – I meant, partly, focusing inwards, on self-examination, instead of being other-directed. Yup – it's just a metaphor. I'm trying to exchange ideas, under tight constraints. Some of my attempts will certainly be less successful than others – for which I'd ask you to forgive me every once in a while.

  10. Monday, June 28, 2010Kathy says:

    I came here from a Tweet by @t… and my line of thinking mirrors that shared by Laura @Pistachio Fitton.

    Maybe because I've worked in various large bureaucracies — corporate and otherwise — I'm more attuned to the origin of the sentiment expressed by Umair.

    When an organization has an environment where failure is routinely criticized — where people are afraid to make a mistake — then there will be very little innovation because innovation is not possible without failures. To fail is the natural result of taking risks, of trying something new. Every new thing cannot be a success – life doesn't work that way! See Clayton Christensen's various books about disruptive innovation should you doubt that assertion.

    It's the response to that failure — by the person and the boss and the organization — that will shape whether or not something is /learned/ from the attempt. But if the climate is one of fear, very few attempts will be made, in my experience.