Last weekend I was playing a Legend of Zelda game with my sons. It was the youngest's turn and he was facing a boss battle.
"What are you thinking here, Austin? How you gonna tackle this guy?"
"Hmm…," he thought for a second. "Well I'm planning to fail at least a couple times so that I can learn his moves and get some practice. Then after lunch I'll come back and kick his butt."
😳 Okay then. If only I'd been so wise so young.
I've been reflecting on it ever since; his strategy exemplifies a core tenant of idStudios — Failure Planning: Fail, Learn and Return.
For all of my upbringing failure was something to be avoided at all costs, and certainly not something I would plan to do! My father was raising a Winner and winners don't fail, right? 🙄…what a waste of time and emotion.
It turns out that winners do fail, and that's precisely why they win! They fail early and often. In fact they rush toward it to get it out of the way. And now the rest of us are beginning to catch up, realising that failure is unavoidable.
It turns out that failure is the only way humans have ever learnt anything. Either through our own mistakes or the mistakes of others, failure is the sole means by which humanity has evolved to the brilliant state it has. So why should we pretend otherwise?
Nonetheless, there's still plenty of my fathers in the world. And their stigma of failure persists. So the work remains undone.
So, I'm sorry to disappoint you dad — idStudios stands in defiance of your only-win-never-lose attitude. We are a proud, ardent advocates of failure.
Where better for Failure Planning to take root than in instructional design. By designing experiences that let workers make mistakes and learn from those mistakes we can deliver behaviour change training that's both incredibly compelling for learners and free of the expensive, real-world consequences. That's what we at idStudios aspire towards.
Later on, after lunch, we sat back down, and Austin picked up the controller. With the knowledge gained through his planned failure, he entered the battle with confidence, knowing already what awaited him. I watched his young eyes flit across the screen and fingers dance across the controller — his practice paid off, and he did exactly what he planned to do — kicking his enemy's butt. Easy!
Let us all plan to fail so that we can sooner succeed.
"suckin' at something's the first step at being sort of good."