Failure can ultimately strengthen organizations and partnerships, while improving social impact, says StriveTogether's Jeff Edmondson.

Failure should not be about looking for people to blame or taking time to dwell on programs that are not working. Instead, failure is an opportunity for continuous learning. Our March 27 Member Breakfast focused on how mistakes can be used to inform improvements in programs and organizations.

View photos from the event here, on Facebook.

Keynote speaker Jeff Edmondson, Managing Director of StriveTogether, said that in order to better learn from failure, the culture needs to shift so that organizations are comfortable reporting both positive and negative experiences. “It's not enough to ask if an organization's programs or partnerships are working. Instead, ask ‘What did you learn from your work over the past year?’ and more importantly, ‘How did you apply those learnings to change what you were doing every day?’” Engaging in that level of reflection and using the opportunities for improvement that failure presents can strengthen organizations and partnerships while improving social impact.

Mr. Edmondson noted that while learning from failure is useful, it is important to not embrace failure to the point where it is glorified. “We want people to embrace failure, but we don’t want people seeking it,” he said.

The relationship between funders and grantees plays a strong role in whether organizations learn from failure or are defeated by it. Mr. Edmondson spoke of the importance of “patient capital,” long-term funding that gives organizations the chance to experiment and to make adjustments once mistakes are made, rather than attempting to get everything right at once and cover up any failures for fear of losing funding.

He also emphasized the importance of communication in relationships between funders and grantees. Conversations between the two groups need to be frank, he said, adding “You have to be communicating about whether you think some tough decisions need to be made.” These conversations are not easy, but they can play a strong role in finding the best way to move on from mistakes.

This theme was reinforced by presenters who spoke of their own moments of failure and how they learned from them. Matthew Blakely, Executive Director of Motorola Solutions Foundation and Natasha Smith-Walker, Executive Director of Project Exploration discussed the importance of the open, honest, and difficult conversations needed to help an organization through a fiscal crisis. “The organization had a core group of supporters that were not only willing to be honest with the organization and honest with each other about what they were willing to do and not do, and what the real issues of the organization were. This transparency was something we all agreed to,” Mr. Blakely said. Ms. Smith-Walker agreed, adding that “sometimes those conversations are not easy, but they need to be had.”

Ms. Smith-Walker also mentioned the importance of developing a detailed plan to help negotiate difficult periods. “The process was also about developing milestones, looking at where we were going, how we were getting there, and maybe activities that were not doing what we needed.” She also said that checking back in on those milestones was an important part of the process.

Communication is also critical when dealing with a program that is not performing as expected. In discussing one such program, Robert Vaughan, Executive Director of the Dunham Fund and Rick Guzman, a Board Member of the Joseph Corporation, said that while there is often an instinct to cover up data from a program that is not working according to its design, prompt and honest communication about what is happening is better. “Communication is your friend, even in the context of failure. It’s kind of hard to mediate something if you are not talking at all,” Mr. Guzman said.

Mr. Vaughan emphasized that building a trusting relationship between funders and grantees can help these conversations occur, and if funders approach the issue with the proper perspective, they can work to make needed adjustments. “Failure, that’s okay. Anytime you take a risk with a service provider in the trenches every day doing the heavy lifting, we can appreciate the fact that sometimes the game changes on you.” He added that punishing grantees with the immediate loss of funding was not consistent with the way funders operated with other partners. “Just this week investment managers lost a lot of money in the market,” Mr. Vaughan said. “But do we fire them? We can keep that relationship, as long as we have an open relationship and it’s good for community.”

Trust and communication also play a role in decisions to close an organization — a decision that can be for the best, Mr. Edmondson said, even if it causes some short-term pain. “You have a few situations where things have gone away, and after the initial pain, even a few weeks after, everyone, including the executive director of the organization that went away, is much happier. Because it was so painful to just keep going, it’s almost like a weight has been lifted. It happens because of communication,” he said.

Another issue knowing how to recognize and describe success and failure. Again, Mr. Edmondson said that communication is key. “We need to have the numbers, and we need to tell the stories, and then we need to have very honest communication about where we think we are based on numbers and the stories.”

Donors Forum's President and CEO Eric Weinheimer, who introduced the session, summed up the central message. “We need to build and foster a culture that rewards learning, discovery, growth, and innovation as healthy byproducts of ‘failure.’”

— Jason Hardy, Member Services Support

We are grateful to students from The People's Music School, a Member, for providing musical entertainment during the Breakfast.