As Kin’s resident space nerd, I frequently find myself filling the company chatroom with space-flavored trivia, news, and events. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the latest and greatest in rocket booster testing or as trivial as bringing a good cup of coffee to zero gravity, it’s all undeniably fascinating to me. Why?
Failure [\ˈfāl-yər\ noun]
To many of us, failure represents flawed execution of an undertaking, such as ‘failing a test’ or ‘failing to get a promotion’. Often times we discard our failures and look for an example of success to model a new attempt after. But what if your goal has never been successfully reached before? If failure is all you have to go on, you have to learn from it. You have to embrace it because nothing else will get you closer to success. There’s something we can all learn from this, and nowhere have I seen this idea championed more than by SpaceX.
The Beautiful, Glorious Failures of SpaceX
In the race to commercialize space travel, SpaceX is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Their most audacious undertaking yet: reusable rockets. If you can recover the expensive and currently single-use propulsion system that typically falls to the bottom of the ocean – that’s a game changer. And that’s how they ended up here, attempting to land a falling rocket vertically on an autonomous drone barge floating in the ocean. Simple, right? Right.
So they tried. And boy did they crash. With, at times, spectacular results.
They failed loud, but more importantly, they failed proud. They wrote about it. They released video. They tweeted photos. They owned it. Elon Musk himself commented on events. To paraphrase? “Bring it on.”
Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2015
Use the Fail, Luke
The truth is, nothing is more instructive than failure. Failure sends a clear signal that change is necessary and imperative. Failure (when properly observed and measured) gives us feedback for improvement. And failure galvanizes us – it motivates to succeed and drives us to work for it.
So how do we embrace this? How do those of us who don’t own a space agency leverage our failures to our advantage? I certainly wish I could give you the answer to rule them all, but there isn’t one. What I can do is tell you about how we try to embrace this at Kin:
Letting Go of the Big Reveal
We all love to wow our customers, and it’s tempting to wait until we’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s to the perfect product… but that’s typically not how the best products are made. We serve our customers but we’re also on the same team: we all have a vested interest in making Kin the best it can be. This is why we test our ideas in front of clients early and often – it may not be the most polished experience to present, but the sooner you find failure, the sooner you can learn from it.
Failure-Metrics
Not all endeavors culminate in either a triumphant climb into space or a burning fireball of despair. Sometimes only time can elucidate a failure, and it’s important to recognize these instances and plan for them. When we know a new feature or product for Kin may not be a resounding success, we make careful plans to measure, analyze, and evaluate our goal over the long haul. If you can’t identify failure, you can’t learn from it.
Endeavors Fail. People Don’t.
We’re passionate about providing our customers the best service possible at Kin, just as many of our customers are passionate about serving their customers. It can be an enormous source of strength, but the same passion that lifts you up in the face of success can turn dark in the face of failure. It can tell you that you’re not good enough, and that you should give up. This is when it’s most important to remind yourself of who you are, what you do, and the distinct line that separates the two.
Who we are is a team of dedicated individuals striving to improve the work and lives of our customers and colleagues. Kin is the manifestation of that work. We do our best to build upon it and improve it, but like all things man-made it is imperfect. Rest assured though, we’ll keep on making Kin better – day in and day out. One small failure at a time.
And as for SpaceX? They haven’t landed that rocket… yet. But if you ask me, it’s only a matter of time.