failure is an essential part of learning

When I was little, I got to spend time with my great-grandmother at her house.

We did different things together, but one thing was clear: She was game to do whatever I wanted to do.

And one of the things I wanted to do was make eggs for lunch.

Not just any eggs, mind you. I only ate unbroken eggs sunny-side up.

So, there was Nana, watching the stove to make sure I didn’t burn myself, handing me another egg to crack.

I did my best but, alas, I broke it.

She never got upset. She’d smile and help me scramble that egg. Then we’d try again.

It did not matter if I broke ten to get two glorious sunny-side-up eggs. I’d sit down to those two eggs with two pieces of toast I’d warmed in her super cool toaster oven (I didn’t have one of those at home,) and she’d eat scrambled eggs. Honestly, she probably ate scrambled eggs several times that week, but I never saw that phase her.

Broken eggs come with the territory of learning something new.

Many businesses have things like professional development programs or R&D departments. (I thought about renaming the latter Exploration and Experimentation — E&E for short. The egg alliteration does not escape me.)

Despite the importance of learning for a business, many don’t want to go all-in.

Here are 3 common objections and my responses to each:

1. We don't have money for 12 eggs.

Well, why not? When you’re setting up your budget this year, create a line for learning that recognizes not everything you do will work. Also, look at funding tests or pilots before going all-in on new initiatives.

2. We worry we'll look stupid.

OK. We all look stupid sometimes. And here’s something that may be hard to swallow: Perfect isn’t real.

Even if you excel at something, you can likely improve, and that doesn’t include new opportunities you have yet to explore.

You will need to normalize failing for your team (like Nana did for me) and potentially strengthen communication with your board (if you have one) so they understand how you will use what you learned moving forward.

3. We worry about performance reviews. What if failing hurts my rising star?

This objection comes down to focus: Don’t focus on mistakes, focus on learning.

With that as your focus, you wouldn’t penalize people for failing; you’d penalize them if they didn’t learn from that failure and share what they learned with the rest of the team.

Here’s to breaking eggs and learning from them.

Subscribe to get a weekly brief on how to run a purpose-driven business. Delivered to your inbox every Monday morning.

Break the Eggs: Responding to Common Learning Objections

failure is an essential part of learning