Failure is more than a possibility in the business world—it’s almost a guarantee.

However, if you embrace the mindset that missteps aren’t fatal but actually welcome segments of your organizational strategy, you can propel your entire team to succeed.

One of the greatest pieces of encouragement I’ve ever received is to greet failure without fear. There’s immense wisdom to be gained from adversity and new opportunities to be found by letting go. You may have heard several adages along these lines, but I personally enjoy how motivational speaker Simerjeet Singh puts it: “Your mistakes don’t define you. If you learn from them, they tend to refine you.”

There’s an art to going up in smoke—you have to fail fast and do it intentionally. This might make you pause for a second and wonder, Why would anyone choose to fail? But if you follow the proven wisdom behind the fail-fast mentality, you can abandon ineffective business strategies, rework your way to superior tactics, and chase new, bolder efforts to achieve greater organizational success.

Weigh risks and rewards

Any financial strategist would advise that there is no reward without risk. Some investments may not pay off—and, in fact, may even be costly—but hunting down the ones that pay dividends is certainly worth the chance.

Back in August 2023, my company, ReminderMedia, attempted a new client onboarding strategy. We started hosting webinars for our clients at 7:00 p.m. eastern time, anticipating that they may prefer to step away from their primary tasks and focus on new marketing services after ordinary business hours close.

We were wrong. These webinars were poorly attended, to the point that they were virtually a waste of man-hours. We had our webinar team promptly abandon this strategy, and then we returned to the drawing board to craft a better scheduling system.

But that’s nothing new for us. At ReminderMedia, we encourage every member of our staff to embody FEARLESS principles. This acronym encompasses various traits of successful people, such as “action” and “leadership,” all of which coalesce around the central tenet of acting without fear and rigorously pursuing goals without reservations.

This business style might sound precarious or even downright reckless, but chasing goals without fear weighing you down is what will allow you to reach them. The perception that top entrepreneurs are unblemished figureheads who never miss is a total myth. They fail all the time; they just know how to pivot from these misses, identify valuable lessons, and take new risks in pursuit of other opportunities that may pay off. In other words, if you’re never losing, you’re not taking enough risks.

Correct your course

While it’s essential to accept risk, you also have to be willing to admit failure. Practicing a fail-fast mentality means knowing how to identify botched business practices and scoop them into the trash bin. To do this, you need to look over your organization with an eagle eye to find fiscal or time sinks that might be operating right under your nose. For example, you and your team leaders could meet periodically—perhaps quarterly—to review your strategies and clean house where necessary. Run financial audits, gauge consumer feedback on your products or services, and review suggestions from employees under your wing. What’s working out? And, just as crucially, what isn’t working out?

Good sales leaders are particularly adept at this, especially when it comes to their staff. They set strict quotas for their personnel, reward consistent top performers, and then periodically let go of those who just aren’t closing enough deals. It can be tough to lose people, but trimming the fat in this way can help you create a team of across-the-board winners.

For a master class on how to course correct, take a look at IBM’s Garage Methodology, a strategic guide to the good business workflows and practices it employs through all reaches of the organization. These tactics are designed specifically for tech companies, but they’re so ingenious that they can be applied outside this industry as well. Check out one of its core tenets: “People have the freedom to fail, but with each failure [they] learn something that enables success.”

Here’s another golden nugget from IBM: “You have a limited amount of time, people, and money to get an idea right. The longer it takes you to realize that an idea isn’t a winner, the more resources you waste.” This is the “fast” in the fail-fast mentality. You aren’t just willing to risk failure; you’re also willing to respond immediately when it happens and redirect your efforts toward something new. This can actually be the one of most exciting aspects of leadership. You get to roll up your sleeves, dig deep, and brainstorm new solutions. What new strategies could you uncover when you reevaluate underperforming practices like a frustratingly slow shipping system? The solution may be elusive at first, but it’ll be incredibly satisfying when you discover concepts that can produce better results.

Practice cautious courage

When you’re unafraid to fall, you’re more willing to take leaps. What happens if you charge straight through that wall of fear that holds people back? You could happen upon something revolutionary, like an expanded digital store, an online booking system with a simpler user interface, or even a completely new business model.

Of course, there is always natural risk involved in any of these changes. While some of your efforts will pay off, others won’t. Clients may be upset by overhauls to practices they’ve grown used to, or you could drain time and money designing and implementing these novel strategies. But you’ll never know unless you try, and your efforts will never pay off unless you devote time to your more fruitful ventures and conserve resources by dropping the ones that disappoint.

To wrap up, I want to share this extra piece of wisdom from IBM Garage: “As your team embraces the notion of failing fast, it gets used to experimenting and recovering from unexpected circumstances as part of the development cycle. Everyone becomes confident that discovering the unknown and reporting on it is respected and treated as a contribution to the project’s success.” Be a brave leader who guides your organization through ups and downs, and you can motivate your team to not only overcome failures but also work together to make waves. Though you might fall down sometimes on your road to success, the triumph is in getting back up.

TAKE ACTION:
Reflect on how you can make the fail-fast mentality a pillar of your organization’s culture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead-generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 100,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.