This week is about AI and being brave enough to “fail fast” and “fail forward”.  I dedicate this to Jax Penso and our tech team.

A few months ago, Jax approached me with an idea.  She had a complicated dataset filled with quant and qual data.  She wanted to explore if AI could help dissect, analyze, and make connections faster and more effectively than humans could.  I loved the vision and the willingness to experiment.

I told Jax that what she was asking was going to be incredibly difficult, and no one (in our company or beyond) had quite figured out how to do this with AI yet.  Jax wasn’t phased.  She was willing to explore, so we got a team together and started working.  The team acknowledged that what we were setting out to do would be incredibly difficult.  We knew that there was a good chance that things would not work out perfectly. We also knew that by pushing the boundaries of what was possible we would learn a lot.  In the end, our prototype didn’t meet our lofty expectations.  HOWEVER, we gathered a lot of learnings along the way. 

Let’s make connections.  How often do you hear people talk about being brave enough to “fail fast” or “fail forward”?  I’m sure you hear it a lot.  Those are some of the all-time most popular corporate buzz words.  Now, how often do you see people who are truly brave enough to fail fast or fail forward?  That’s a rarity.  It would have been easy for Jax and the team to decide not to pursue the project, once they understood that the chances of perfect success was slim to none.  It would have been easier, BUT it would not have been as fruitful. 

Imagine how different work would be if more folks acted like Jax and the team?  At the end of the day, the team didn’t fail.  They learned.  The team didn’t fail, they created a new foundation.  Pursuing the impossible led us to exploring new technologies and approaches.  It also challenged us to rethink and better embrace the Agile mentality.  We didn’t make it to the summit, but other folks will be able to leverage our learnings to get them a head start.

The challenge: Are you brave enough to explore, even when you’re not 100% sure how it will turn out?  Are you one of the rare people brave enough to “fail fast” or “fail forward”?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry