Failing Fast and Succeeding How Smart Women Build Confidence

Failing Fast and Succeeding How Smart Women Build Confidence Article by Wendy SachsBig trends have a way of touching all of us. From tattoos to Birkenstocks to gay marriage, certain ideas, products, and political movements areable to reach critical mass and gain acceptance, folding into the fabric of ur collective culture. Today, Silicon Valley and the startup world are our cultural crushes.Our love of the Valley is part mythology, with its unicorn billion-dollar startups likeUber and Airbnb, and part psychology, with its change-the-world, disrupt-the-status-quo, always-innovating ethos. In the past decade, Silicon Valley has become our North Star, influencing everything from news and entertainment to public policy and workplace culture.The celebrated startup model of disruption that embraces failing fast and pivoting is leid a typically female one. Women tend to be more risk averse. We can overthink our next move and not act until were 100 percent re ady. We might feel like frauds when were trying something new. Instead of being disruptive, women tend to be more disciplined. Were often not pivoting because were stuck.So, what would happen if women were to embrace the startup model? What if we had the confidence to take risks knowing that we might fail at first? What if instead of agonizing about which step to take, we leapt forward quickly? What if we could apply the lessons of iteration, engineering serendipity, failing fast, networking, and strategic branding to help us redirect our paths, enhance ourselves, or transform our careers?The Failure FetishEmbracing failure has become fetishized in Silicon Valley. With an estimated 9 out of 10 startups flaming out within a few years, failure is as universal inthe Valley as relentless optimism. Believing that they are working on the next big thing that will transform the world keeps those in the startup space grinding away, even if the staggering odds of success are against them. Thi s is the beauty of the culture of innovation An environment that encourages risk ultimately creates change.Failure welchesnt always so fashionable. The tech world used to bury its dead without much fanfare. Companies folded quietly. Founders whose businesses flopped were rescued and hired by friends. But then something changed. In 2009, Cassandra Phillipps, an event production planner who had entered the startup scene in San Francisco, grew tired of pretending that everything was perfect with her social media business. She launched FailCon, an event where entrepreneurs could share their stories of epic fails, the lessons they learned, and the emotional roller coasters they experienced. This was Phillippss way of making it real, ripping the facade off of the founders myth that everything was fabulous.Phillipps felt that wherever she went, people would boast about their successes and talk about how great things were going and how pleased their investors were with their companys growth . But that wasnt Phillippssexperience. Her company was floundering. She was depressed. She longed for support.I would go to the events and everyone was so positive, and I felt like I had to do the same thing or I would be kicked out of the community, Phillipps says. It felt like you were a failure if you were having problems. You couldnt ever be honest about how you were doing. It made me feel like personally I was a failure. I wondered why everyone around me was doing so well. I felt like we couldnt discuss it in this environment.So Phillipps changed the environment. The FailCon event was a safe space to share what went wrong. When it launched in 2009, it was a huge success, with nearly 500 people at the inaugural event. It quickly grew to more than 20 events around the world. Now, the once-quiet funerals of startups have loud platforms where people can publicly mourn and broadcast their experiences. It has become trendy for entrepreneurs to post their postmortems on blogging platf orms such as Medium. Some even see it as strategic a strategic move announcing theirfailure could bea way to look for another job. Its like advertising Hey, I did all of this great stuff, but it didnt work out. Im seasoned, I failed, hire meThe fail fastmantra is popularin the tech industry, where many products arent fully baked before prototypes are released to the public. Think Gmail, which was released internally to Google employees in the early 2000s and released to the public a few years later in 2007. Such unfinished productsare known as beta versions.The tech world is obsessed with speed and getting to market first. The expectation is that nothing you initially launch will be perfect, and it doesnt need to be. Its not about perfection its about acting quickly. Companies try out products for people to test. They keep what sticks and toss what doesnt. Its a learning experience They improve features, they tweak, they iterate, they adjust, just so.Failing Fast Builds ConfidenceTh is model of risk, act, fail, and iterate is equally useful inour careers. Many psychologists sayfailure is a valuable step in the journey to success. Its a critical learning tool, because it forces you to dig into your reservoir of grit. It tests your perseverance and can ultimately make you stronger.Failure really can be an asset if we are trying to improve, learn or do something new. Its the feature that precedes nearly all successes. Theres nothing shameful about being wrong, about changing course. Each time it happens, we have new options. Problems become opportunities, writes Ryan Holiday, author of The Obstacle Is the Way The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.Talk to anyone in the midst of failure, and theyll say its messy and awful. There is plenty of pushback now about how glorifying failure masks the horrible reality of the toll a tanking company takes on its founders. But for women, there is something to be learned from the startup culture that takes the stigma o ut of failing and encourages risk confidence.The proven way to gain confidence is to take action. Even in failure, youve acted. Youve taken risks. Youve learned. And out of failure comes growth.Weve come to see the theory of failing fast as the ideal paradigm for building female confidence, write Katty Kay and Claire Shipman in The Confidence Code. If we can embrace failure as forward progress, then we can spend time on the other critical confidence skill mastery.Mastery, of course, comes after getting really good at something. The more time you put in, the more adept you feel and the more confident you become. Taking action is the first step toward becoming confident.And if at first you fail, well, know that youre in good company and success is around the corner.A version of this article previously appeared on SUCCESS.com.Adapted from Fearless and Free How Smart Women Pivot and Relaunch Their Careers by Wendy Sachs. All rights reserved. Published by AMACOM Books.Wendy Sachs is a m aster of the career pivot. An Emmy-award winning TV news producer, Wendy has worked at Dateline NBC, Fox, and CNN. She also worked as a Capitol Hill press secretary, public relations executive, CNN contributor, content strategist, and editor-in-chief of Care.com. In a more random role, Wendy appeared as the on-air spokesperson for TripAdvisor. A frequent speaker, Wendy has written about work/life and womens issues for multiple publications, including The New York Times, CNN.com, the Huffington Post, and Refinery29. She has appeared on dozens of radio and TV shows, including Good Morning America, NBCs Today, Fox, and CNNs Headline News. Wendy lives with her husband and two children in South Orange, New Jersey. For more information, please visit WendySachs.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.