How consultants can help clients fail fast – to succeed quickly

Silicon Valley culture has given rise to several management techniques that have influenced not just the tech business, but other sectors too – from design thinking to data-driven decision-making. Of course, it’s not been all good: consider the Valley culture for long hours, hyperfocus on growth at all costs and, consequently, high burnout rates.

But perhaps one of the healthier ideas to emerge is the “fail fast” principle – an emphasis on the importance of quickly identifying and addressing failures or shortcomings in order to learn from them and make necessary adjustments.

The fast-paced and innovative nature of the tech sector necessitates rapid experimentation and adaptation. Entrepreneurs and startups embrace the mindset of failing fast to quickly test ideas, pivot where necessary, and optimise their products or services for the market. When Amazon introduced the Kindle, for example, it rushed to get a minimum viable product (MVP) into the hands of users quickly so it could gather feedback and iterate on the design and features. That “fail-fast” approach allowed the company to test and refine the concept based on real-world usage and customer input.

This fail fast idea also has roots in lean manufacturing and agile software development – but it’s become a guiding principle for all kinds of teams and organisations seeking to foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement and adaptability. “The pace of change in our world today is so fast and not showing signs of slowing – so teams need to be able to fail fast and learn fast to simply survive,” warns Scott Rodham-Boyd CMgr FCMI CMC ChMC FIC, account leader at management consultancy Mott Macdonald.