Elise Olding

“Fail Fast” and  Social Media – Opposing Forces?

I posted a tweet the other day and I feel it needs more context.  “How do we evolve a culture that embraces risk and failing fast in a world with instantaneous negative feedback?”  Is every small misstep now cause for a rant and public debate?  How do we put all this into context?  How do we reconcile this with the need to innovate – which means we will make mistakes. 

On one hand we need an organizational culture of “failing fast” and of innovation – on the other hand we have flocks of onlookers waiting to swoop in at the first sign of defeat or imperfection and splash it as the latest scoop.  I’m sure we can all come up with lots of examples.  What about a baseball player with a high batting average – 350 – maybe he struck out his last time at bat – will the tweets be “xxx on downward slide?”  No, because there is a commonly understood context for this performance in light of the game and season. 

Here’s another data point – an article that Wall Street does not like innovation – Wall Street is No Friend to Radical Innovation  Are the cards stacking up against us? 

Perhaps we need to consider educating our audiences, to begin to develop a common language and way for all of us to evaluate experiments and discern what are core/tested business components and what are new trials.  Enable the collective to evaluate specific examples in the context of the game as a whole – like baseball.   Until we address this I suspect the culture of failing fast will be at a standstill.

On another vein, check out this “Pulse  of the Nation” Twitter analysis.  Please share your interpretations. 

Follow me on Twitter  I will respond to your comments.

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Category: BPM     Tags: BPM, Social, socialmedia

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