How can we deal with failure?
I was a finalist in an interview process but didn’t get the job. I was an executive at a startup that failed to close its seed round of funding. I had to lay off employees in my group. I led drug discovery programs that had to be terminated. I worked for 2 years on a research project that never advanced, and eventually I had to just drop it. I set out to replicate published findings but ended up discovering that they were wrong.
These are just some of my (very real) personal failures. We’ve all failed, multiple times. If you haven’t failed then you aren’t trying hard enough. This is especially true in science, where the goal of research is to push the boundaries of what’s known. By definition, some of our hypotheses about the unknown will turn out to be right but many will be wrong.
The fact that everyone fails at some point, the fact that we have each failed multiple times in our life and in our career, does not make the experience of failure any easier. So how can we overcome it?
For me, the answer has two parts: adaptability and learning. Both of these are internal responses – things that I can control – to a situation that is beyond my control.
First, it’s important to adapt to the new reality. If you’ve had more than one conversation with me, you’ve probably heard me talk about having a compass rather than a map. What I mean is that in any situation I have a general idea of where I want to go – what job I want to have in five years, what size funding round we’re trying to close, a scientific hypothesis I am testing. That is the compass. Importantly, that goal is more than one step ahead of me.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Because the ultimate goal is not the outcome of the next step I take, there are always several possible next steps that I could take. But I only plan a few steps ahead, never the exact sequence of steps that I intend to take from where I am all the way to where I want to be – that would be the map. In the map scenario, if I’ve planned to take one particular path and find it blocked then I am stuck. Instead, I use my compass to show me the direction I want to go from where I am right now, then look around me to determine what makes the most sense as my next step (and a few logical next steps after that) – some context-appropriate version of "climb onto this boulder, jump over the crevasse, then find a way down on the other side." In the scientific hypothesis example this would be a specific experiment, in the fundraising example this would be a particular investor to approach. I take that next step and then – regardless of the outcome – I reevaluate my new position relative to my ultimate goal and decide what is the best next step to take in that ultimate direction. Sometimes it’s the step I had planned to take, but often it’s not. Maybe, from my new vantage point on top of the boulder, I can see a better path forward.
With this approach, an unsuccessful step is still a valuable step because it shows me a path that is not accessible, and therefore helps narrow my search around the viable path forward. The feeling of failure from an unsuccessful step is just a momentary disappointment. The only real failure is the failure to take any step at all.
The second element in this philosophy is learning. If I have learned something new from an experience, then it is not a complete failure. Didn’t close the financing round? But I met new investors and learned what they look for in their investment deals. Didn’t get the job? But I had the opportunity to think deeply about a new idea that I hadn’t considered before. Spent years pursuing a breakthrough that never happened? But knowing what ISN’T true is almost as important as knowing what IS true, especially when working on the edges of known science.
By this measure, a failure is really just a realization that the path we tried to take was the wrong one. We can move forward in a different direction, now armed with important new knowledge. For fans of The Princess Bride, this is like navigating the Fire Swamp. You might not have been able to avoid the flame spurts or lightning sand or R.O.U.S.’s, but at least now you know how to spot them in the future.
We rarely intend to fail but often we fail nonetheless. Dealing with failure is both a universal and a deeply personal experience. What are some strategies that you use to manage it?
This path adjustment based on results combined with deep tenacity is what it takes to make breakthroughs for patients!
Hi Irit, Great post! Thanks for sharing. I was listening to a Luke Timmerman interview recently, and the interviewee (David Shenkein) had a similar observation. Drug discovery has a high attrition rate. You're going to fail more often than you succeed, but you have to take the time to celebrate those failures and acknowledge the fact that you learned something in the process. At one company they had a piñata bashing party for the failed project. That said, I think it's important to keep in mind that drug discovery companies are inherently learning organisations and its important to capture the lessons learned from the failures as much as the successes. You want to be able to use that information to help build better AI models, but perhaps more importantly, you want to build a learning organisation.
Great points Irit Rappley !
The timing of me reading this article was perfect Irit. Just last night I said to my husband, “okay, what I have not tried dammit! I’m exhausted!” He said, “you never quit so you will figure something out my little Phoenix!”🐦🔥 Today I’m back to the drawing board!
couldnt agree more - meaning its not failures >> its experience