It's good to fail... fast

A little under a month ago, some friends and I announced an offer to launch a free service - free to set up, free to use, free to leave, free of advertising. The service is a way of getting up and running with a modern, social web site - that's the technology - and a community of willing helpers collaborating to get better results for everyone.

It was for a specific niche - UK churches. It was to address a specific, known problem - that (according to a recent study) the vast majority of UK churches don't have a current, active website at all. And of those that do, a small proportion are interactive as well as active - that is, most church websites are brochures to read rather than communities meeting and welcoming others.

We had direct experience (independently of one another) of some of the underlying issues. Many churches struggle making decisions involving expenditure more complicated than buying another box of tea bags. People with relevant skills often feel put upon, expected to do for free what they are normally hired to do, and faced with unrealistic expectations ("you do websites, don't you?" = "I don't care if you're a back end developer, a front-end developer, a designer or an account manager, just make my problem go away, now!"). And the "norm of niceness" that infects so many churches means that everyone knows what they don't want, few will be willing to turn their vague thoughts into definite ideas, and a dominant voice will effectively dictate the outcome.

We didn't think we wanted to tackle those issues - there are plenty of companies selling outdated, proprietary CMS-driven websites to churches, driven by their ability to navigate the particular buying and implementation processes. Good luck to them! Most are well-intentioned, at least, and a few are quite good.

Instead, we saw an opportunity. We're people who know how the technology works and how costs build up, and so we were able to define a technical solution that would cost a few hundred pounds up-front to create, a few tens of pounds a month to run, plus time and goodwill. We decided to build on WordPress, because (a) it works, (b) it has a vast resource base, (c) the software is free to take, use and adapt. We identified multiple ways to create the service, and looked at take-on (making it easy to get people from nothing to something nice-looking and actually usable) and push-off (making it easy to get people off our platform and onto their own or someone else's). And we did technical validation - yes, it works in practice as well as in theory.

So we got to the 'ready enough' point. We knew we could create the service, and we knew our way around the detailed options we would be choosing between. So we knew we could build a real, live service to meet the promise with a few more hours of work up-front, and a reasonable enough workload in terms of hours per week post launch.

So we launched. Sort of.

Specifically, we said we'd launch the live service if 50 UK churches wanted a website for free. To signal this, they had to tweet a hashtag, like a facebook page or fill in an online form. All of these things required a small amount of effort, and we didn't work hard on promotion.

We got into double figures, but nowhere near the 50. So we won't launch. (I predicted we wouldn't!)

We failed. We failed fast. It's good to fail fast.

You can't fail unless you try. Most people talk a lot about things they want to do, very few try to do them.

Until you fail, it's hard to learn. Most projects exist in a kind of twilight world, where the expectations and effort have gone down, but there's still a dream. By saying "we've failed - and we're moving on," you get to look at things objectively.

And when you fail fast, there aren't so many loose ends to tie up. There's no long, painful running uphill, draining your practical and emotional resources to the dregs. So the learning you achieved, you can apply. Or you can choose another venture. Either way, you start with a positive attitude and a bit of momentum, released by being prepared to say, "That's it. We failed. Now, what shall we do?" Well, almost every meaningful success has come off the back of one, several, many failures. The trick is to welcome failure, and fail fast.

Or, as Samuel Beckett said, "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

Idea Transform - An Act of Co-Creation

Speaking as an "ordained entrepreneur," both halves of me have a strong interest in acts of co-creation. The best things you (singular) can possibly be involved in making will be made by you (plural). And Idea Transform is an example of that in at least two ways.

First, Mauro Ciaccio, Chris Measures and I have a strong and shared interest in events that help people with ideas become teams with running projects. We have very different backgrounds, personalities and styles, but we have lots in common as well. That led us to become local organisers of an event in Cambridge last year - which both proved that something everyone said Cambridge just wouldn't support could be massively successful, and that we could work together under pressure! And we found we had an ambition for more...

Idea Transform is all about making a big difference - and we all want that to become more than just an idea. Along the way, we found friends and supporters, and our ideas were improved by accommodating their insights. (In the case of Jo Vertigan, I think we've absorbed more than just insights, I think we've absorbed Jo along with them!) As I've found so often and in so many ways, a team willing to work hard and put their own reputations on the line will often find support from others giving what they can to support the vision - time, money, facilities, spreading the word. This is my own private blog post, so "official" team thanks come from elsewhere, but I have to say a huge personal thank you to the individuals: Peter Cowley, Chris Lamaison, Allan Maclean and Shai Vyakarnam of our Advisory Board, who magnified our vision; the Idea Transform Mentors (too numerous to name, but heroes of the weekend); the corporate sponsors and supporters who made it possible to run a long weekend event in the middle of Cambridge yet keep the ticket price well below £100.

But all we created together was a context. From 5:30pm on Friday, 20 April until 51 hours later, together we provided a place where it would be possible for other people to come together, bring ideas, experience, talents and aspirations and form teams working together to make a definite difference in the world. And that really was an act of co-creation.

Like anything creative, there was friction as well as harmony. I'm a veteran of quite a few similar events, and I'm always disappointed when people sign up, but don't find, join and stick with a team. I remember an event a couple of years ago when someone came with an exciting vision, but every detail was non-negotiable. Frustrated when people didn't flock to join a team and become a free workforce, contributing nothing but work, receiving nothing but instruction, that person went away with a face like thunder. They would have got so much by staying, and either allowing the idea to be improved by sharing it with others, or by joining a team working on something completely different and building new knowledge and relationships.

Can you, truly, change the world in a weekend spent working together? Maybe not. But I believe you can change lots of things. Your own perspective, for a start. So many of the people I met wanted to change lives, and wanted to learn how. Whether the idea their team was working on will progress in its present form, who can say? From the feedback I've had already, each team built up a much clearer picture of how to validate that the problem they are working on is genuine, that the possible solution they have identified is valuable, and that they can make a step, then another, then another along that road. That may be a few days of work, but it may also be months, years or even decades.

So not every idea, not every team will continue in its present form. But the relationships, the experiences, the feeling of what happens when beautifully simple ideas meet the mess of reality - all those will persist.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that we have, as we wanted, helped at least one world-changing idea to make a decisive step forward.

For a few hours, people came together and suspended disbelief about all the impossibilities of life. We met as equals, co-workers, co-creators. And maybe, just maybe, millions of lives may be changed for the better by ideas transformed by encounters, transformed into works in progress.