While it’s easy to pay lip service to the idea of innovating by failing fast, humans are both neurally geared and financially incentivized to avoid failure. We’ve all heard the tales of woe: blameless reviews that were anything but blameless; encouragement to work on an experimental project with punishment being the primary result of its failure; and the associated fear of doing anything new, speculative or untried. The results are simple: individuals, teams, and companies that stagnate slowly. So how can we create an environment that makes failing fast safe for the participants and their organizations? In this talk, we’ll cover key strategies for creating an environment that fosters rapid innovation in your organization, including: * Conducting effective and truly blameless project post-mortems * Creating an organizational culture or failing the right way * Measuring the impacts of positive failure – and failing to fail – on your organization’s bottom line. Attendees will leave this presentation with concrete strategies to conquer their own fear of failure, and how to help their organizations do the same. Presented at DevOpsDaysAmsterdam 2015 on June 25, 2016. Video will be posted at http://www.devopsdays.org/events/2015-amsterdam/program/ Presentation licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Fear of Failing Fast
How to Avoid Sabotaging Your Success
Leslie Hawthorn
DevOpsDays Amsterdam 2015
@lhawthorn

2. Apollo 13

4. No one from the
Apollo 13 Mission
or NASA
was known to utter
these words.

6. So if we all
know these things…
Why is it still so hard?

7. MAF: Micromanagement in Avoidance of Failure

8. Only Setting Goals You Know You Can Achieve

9. Avoiding discussions of failure entirely ….
Or only when exhorting to push forward to victory!

10. A Few Ways to
Do It Better
Failing the Right Way

11. Celebrate What You Learned By Failing

12. Failure +
Learning from It =
Integral Part of Team Goals
& HR Review Process

13. I liked….
I wish….
I wonder….

14. Measuring the Impact of
Failing to Fail

15. Own your mistakes - it gets easier with practice!

16. Thank you!hank you
Leslie Hawthorn
DevOpsDays Amsterdam 2015
@lhawthorn

17. The Legal Bits
This presentation is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Please
use, remix and share widely!
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
All images are copyright their respective owners
and are used under a Creative Commons license
or considered fair use.

18. Photo Credits
• Apollo 13 Capsule: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jopoe/3111916954/
• Failure is not an option tee: http://www.truffleshuffle.co.uk/store/ladies-blue-failure-is-not-an-option-nasa-
tshirt-p-6261.html (considered fair use)
• Failure is a requirement: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjarrett/8063226488/
• Team with microscopes: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zeissmicro/8864950302/
• Stretching is good: https://www.flickr.com/photos/activefree/1175037582/
• Company meeting: https://www.flickr.com/photos/quazie/3910922714/
• Fireworks: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jopoe/3111916954/
• Team: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bibendum84/5483569272/
• Dandelion wish: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8047705@N02/5572197407/
• Reward: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakerust/16827374355/
• Einstein Quote: https://www.flickr.com/photos/celestinechua/10417682004/
• Lunch basket: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nillanilzon/15742207083/