So we've done a ton of large initiatives global initiatives at the Case
Foundation, which my husband and I founded and I run, and one we did in an
unusual way, high-profile launch with President Clinton to my right and First
Lady Laura Bush to my left, and it was a clean water initiative aimed at
ten Sub-Saharan African countries. Okay, so we launched we did tons of
partners all kinds of capital went into it and as we tried to execute on the
ground it wasn't going so well and so we did what you guys would do to you know
we tried to figure out what's going wrong, how do we course correct, but it
became clear that we weren't going to achieve both the quality and the scale
that we had hoped to. And so I'll never forget the board meeting, Astro, we have
these glass walls at the Case Foundation and you know, we were stressed. We really
had to decide what was going to happen and I knew what we had to do. We really
had to basically acknowledge the failure and decide to move on from it. And so I—
that's the decision of the board—that we were going to stop the initiative and I
wrote a blog called The Painful Acknowledgment of Coming Up Short in
which I just laid out the failures. Again, it was a situation where I felt we had
done everything we could to put success on its side, but it just wasn't working
out and it was amazing to me how that became really an important moment and
maybe you can use it here that way too because suddenly all kinds of people
came forward and said, you know, thanks for acknowledging what was hard, thanks
for acknowledging the effort that went into it, etcetera. You know, at the Case
Foundation we've continued with that when we do our annual business review of
what we're out there funding and finding we always we have—I don't know how you
guys do it here—but we have green, yellow, red, and one year we didn't have any reds
and it was like we—and this is so true here of any place in the world—maybe if
you don't have reds you're not out on the edge, right, because there's just no
way that everything you try here—I don't care how smart and capable everybody is
if you're really after the most audacious goals you're gonna have
failures and that's probably the time when you just almost like have a
kumbaya moment of saying that's what we're about is trying
even when it doesn't work.
I totally agree. I often reference skiing in a few—
if don't fall once in a while you're not skiing fast enough because you're not
gonna learn anything if you're never falling. Now you don't want to break your
neck but you should be falling a couple times a day
in a somewhat spectacular yardsale way, or you're not getting better at a good clip
and so I agree we should be worried if
the failure modes that we have we could have seen before or if they're
life-threatening to people there are kinds of failures that we should avoid
and then there are other kinds of failures, where the absence of them
should worry us just as much if we're not doing them as often because that
means that there's unharvested risk that we were too afraid to go after because
we would have had to stop doing more things or we would have faceplanted
that a little bit more spectacularly once in a while.
Yeah, and you know,
when we talked and going back to the question that was just asked on this, we talked
about humility playing a role here. You know, just knowing out there in the world
the question of can Silicon Valley be humble right now and Astro and I have spent
a lot of time talking about the humility of the teams here.
The other thing failure can do is it can really keep you humble and I think
humility is an undervalued characteristic particularly when you're
out there really flying high, which you guys are high fliers, you know, we get to
do things where we fly high. Humility teaches, just like failure teaches, and
failure can create humility. In the long run I think, you know, that humility can
be a really positive force as you go forward.
When teams are unsuccessful of
one kind or another the kinds of things that they're afraid of—a personal thing
that they're afraid of that happens, or when it happens to a team, we spend a lot
of our time here trying to find ways to help teams and individuals feel ahead of
time like it will be okay. I'm curious how many people here have had
their project at X stopped or the group they were part of meaningfully disbanded?
So presumably those folks actually feel somewhat better because they've already
been through it before.
They've been through it before, yeah.
But we think a lot about how to help the other 70%. If
you haven't been through it before, how do you feel, viscerally, that it's gonna be
okay. What have you seen that companies can do—not to say it won't hurt a little
bit when you fall—but to say you're not gonna break your neck, metaphorically
speaking. That yeah, we'll help you get up, we'll dust you off, it's going to be fine.
We'll go on some more runs later in the day, we'll try the double black diamond.
Yeah. Well the hands that went up can
probably be your best strategic asset you know on the day when you talk about
shutting something down. Because you guys have been through it. It's not the same
kind of daunting if you've been through it and you landed it okay.
I have a chapter in the book called Fail in the Footsteps of Giants, and you know
it's just I think we do everyone, but particularly young people, a disservice
when we sanitize stories of success and too often they are sanitized. You know, I
did a whole commencement address once on just my failure resume and you know so I
just think having the people who've been through it be transparent about "Hey, I've
been there things, worked out, it'll be okay"
is really it's more powerful thing than it might seem on the surface.
Have you seen companies doing other things that—like an example is, to varying degrees
we've given bonuses to teams when they help to wind down their own project to tell them
that we understand not only—everyone here works hard, so the bonus isn't like
"you worked hard!" because everybody here's working hard and it's not, "gee, we're
really sorry for you and this will help you,
you know, nurse your wounds a little bit better", it's, you did part of the hard
work of becoming dispassionate and being a
portfolio manager here with us, you pulled yourself out of the intense
you know, immediacy you're in and got past your own individual fears and that is
praiseworthy above and beyond the hard work that everyone here is doing.
So that's something we do what else have you seen other companies do like that
that helps sort of land we want you to act fearlessly and we reward you when
you act fearlessly.
Well, you know, fearless rewards can be bonuses or beyond, we've
done bonuses too, and by the way, I think those bonuses shouldn't just wait 'til
something shuts down, right, but if you found a critical failure along the way
that allowed you to pivot and find the right way forward that's another time
where fearless recognition can come in. You know, the sad news is as you're
asking your question I'm sitting here going what have I seen what have I seen
I haven't really seen a lot of examples of companies sort of getting it right
when it comes to how to reward failure beyond these issues that we talked about
about, whether it's bonus, or whether it's really creating the atmosphere, you know,
the environment that basically acknowledges you know no one gets fired
if they're doing what they need to do.