Society now opens up to accepting failure

In a world that only celebrates success how much room is there for failure None is what most of us are inclined to think But there appears to be a peripheral movement globally nudging people to embrace disappointments Smith College in Northampton USA is handing certificates of failure to students who enroll into their new programme Failing Well Its part of Smiths Wurtele Centre for Work and Life the colleges motivation cell While handing certificates for failure is something hitherto unheard of in the US certain colleges like Princeton Harvard and Stanford have been engaging themselves in dialogues around failure to counter increasing bouts of depression and stress among students consumed by the competition on campusThere are forces beyond campus too making efforts to make failure less taboo FailCon a oneday conference in Silicon Valley San Francisco was started in 2009 as a platform where entrepreneurs investors designers and developers could study their own and others failures and prepare for success It went on to become a global property with presence in several countries including India There are others too FUp Nights a global movement to share business failure stories that started in Mexico in 2012 saw its first India session in Mumbai in 2015 The ongoing event continues to have a keen participation from those who can finally take to the podium even though they have not or at one point did not quite make itJessica BacalLessons in failureJessica Bacal director Smith College Wurtele Centre for Work and Life who was instrumental in initiating the program observed that students arrived at college having internalised a sense that there is no room for failure This is why we want to engage them in conversations about mistakes and failures and how to cope and move past them Students who come to Smith have usually been successful throughout school They have had to be focussed on achievement in order to be admitted says Bacal who developed a book titled Mistakes I Made At Work Penguin 2014 where successful women openly spoke about their failures The curriculum of Failing Well is dedicated to discussing failure risk taking and making mistakes Over 500 students a fifth of the student body have signed up for the program which was introduced in 2016 No one is required to attend So a decent attendance is because students tell their friends about them says BacalThe goal is to increase resilience by teaching telling stories and opening a campus conversation about failure One project engaged faculty and staff in emailing us their own failures We borrowed the term failure resume from a Princeton professor and these were shown on screens in the Campus Center Students were then invited to make their own failure resumes in order to inject a little humour and selfcompassion into the college culture Bacal writes in an email interviewMost of the failures that students share she says involves getting low grades or not getting fellowships theyve applied for Many students who are the first in their families to attend postsecondary institutions talk about the feeling that they will be disappointing their families unless they achieve in every dimension Parents however have been enthusiastic We have even heard from a parent who works at a medical school in the US wanting to tutor doctors in reflecting on challenges and mistakesAshish GoenkaThe Fword beyond campusSan Francisco resident Blake Merriam executive producer of FailCon India was drawn towards the forum after failing hard at an ecommerce project his father had sent him to India for in 2005 The 41yearold who had dabbled in webbased startups wanted to learn more not just about what it takes to succeed but what it takes to succeed in India I saw that FailCon was growing as a global movement I asked founder Cassandra Philips for permission to do the event in India Merriam who lived in Mumbai for six years chose to organise the conference in Bengaluru in February 2013 To do it well as a tech conference it had to be the Silicon Valley of India We had 120 attendees and I received many thank you messages The speakers at FailCon are those admired for their success however their talk is about the bad times It also allows attendees to connect on more specific failures in their realm of work Merriam saysA poster from a Failng Well sessionWhat is it about failure stories Success stories are unique Therell be only one Mark Zuckerberg and one Dhirubhai Ambani Its the failure stories that are more common have more to learn from and therefore more helpful and productive says Merriam who is currently looking out for sponsors for the next FailCon India edition I suspect there might be some good failure stories surrounding the GST implementation he smilesAshish Goenka founder of Bombay Connect Indias oldest coworking space was looking for something that went beyond gyanbaazi that told us what we needed to do to succeed He attended a session of FailCon in San Francisco and was taken in by the idea I started to look for more movements like these when I came across FUp Nights We held our first session in Mumbai in 2015 following which we took it to Delhi Hyderabad and Bengaluru It caught on quite well also because of the catchy name I started by approaching friends startup founders who had a story to tell to be speakers It could be about anything work or home as long as they fell rose and made a comeback The message was that you have to fail to succeed says the 38yearold Before he knew it Goenka was inundated with requests from people wanting to be speakers Normally conference speakers are these big shots overachievers This was a chance for those who were not there yet to be heard by nonjudgmental earsFailing in IndiaGregory Kroitsch founder of Lower Parels microbrewery Barking Deer was a speaker at the 2015 edition of FUp Nights We had made several mistakes in our entrepreneurial journey of Barking Deer going in naively into many things It was a humbling experience one that was cathartic and healing to share he says Kroitsch however feels that India is less tolerant of failure when compared to the West Ive heard stories of investors not wanting to put their money if you have not tried and failed at least once If the economy here has to grow smaller businesses will need to be developed people will need to take risks and there will be a lot of failure So it is beneficial to have forums like these where people can learn from each others mistakes says Kroitsch who also hosted two editions of FUp Nights