Fear Less, Fail More

Handling Failure as a Product Manager

I've been reflecting on the concept of failure lately, particularly its implications for a product manager. How does one balance clients expectations & a personal yearning to succeed with an innate fear of failure? In this article, I will attempt to explore the paradox of striving for success in a field that has failure as an inherent part of the process while having a fear of failure.   

Being a child of upwardly mobile parents created a legacy for a new generation that success was the driving force behind your actions and decisions. I was conditioned to avoid failure & strive to get it right first-time. This served as a useful guide to navigate school and exams. However, this mindset in adulthood can be exhausting, leading to analysis paralysis and a reluctance to take risks. As a product manager, you must fight this instinct and embrace failure as part of the journey. Let’s be clear - failing sucks! 

Whenever I think of the discipline of product management, I am often drawn to a central theme at its core - minimise failure. Jon Kolko, in his book "well-designed", describes product management as “finding a good fit between a product, a person, and the market.” Now, to achieve this; companies these days worship at the altar of agile. The premise is simple - create faster feedback loops with your customers by building in smaller chunks and releasing quickly. In theory, this means failure is baked into product development - you learn from customers and make adjustments. You might have heard the saying by Steve Blank, “No plan survives first contact with the customer” It’s true—no matter how many user stories and business models you draft, real-world feedback is unpredictable.

But, stakes are high and the pressure to succeed can be immense. Companies want to make sure bets (as unlikely as that is). Product management is about making judgment calls on what’s best for a product, ensuring it fits well with the market and meets user needs. How do you manage failure in a career designed to mitigate it? It’s a tricky balance. Fear of failure can stifle innovation, turning bold ideas into cautious moves. Here are some tips to help with shifting your mindset from a fear of failure to a growth mindset:

Tips for Handling Failure

1. Change Your Mindset: Shift your perspective on failure from something to be feared to something to learn from. Celebrate small failures as steps towards success. Having a ‘growth mindset’ is critical in shifting your mentality. Roman Pichler, in "Leveraging Failure in Product Management," describes the impact of being afraid to fail “this restricts me to my comfort zone—I keep doing what I do well—as this feels nice and pleases my ego. The drawback is that I don’t develop and grow, avoid challenging projects, and miss new opportunities.”

2. Learn to Let Go: Letting go is two fold. Don’t be scared to share progress as you go along & treat failure for the imposter that it is. Failure can be a useful tool if you learn to not dwell on it. Take the lessons and figure out a better approach to get where you need to go. Remember that failure and success are not endpoints. Let’s take a personal example: When you become a parent, watching your child learn to walk is a lesson in balancing protection with letting go. The real lesson lies in how children let go of the past failures i.e. stumbling and eventually, they walk. This does not mean they’ll never fall but with time, they build an admirable resilience to pick themselves up after momentary sadness and go again. Similarly, in product management, you need to allow room to let go and go again.

3. Seek a Supportive Culture: Seek environments where failure is encouraged to get to good outcomes for customers and clients. Encourage open discussions about failures within your team. This can help everyone learn and grow together. Consider dedicating a spot to a “Failure Day” series in your team, where you discuss failures openly and learn from them. This can foster a culture of transparency and continuous improvement. Remember, it’s not just you—many people fear failure and desperately want to succeed. By sharing these experiences, you can alleviate some of that fear. My colleague, Richard Williams, offers some helpful tips here on having the right attitudes towards failure. 

4. Lean into your superpower: Okay, you have a fear of failure - so what? This just means you are likely to ensure things are done properly. Find the right balance between mitigating risks and taking bold steps. Use data and feedback to guide your decisions but don’t be paralysed by the fear of making mistakes. 

5. Utilise the Tools of the Trade: Many tools exist to help us examine where we have gone wrong & lessons we can take forward - post-mortem retros are an example I have found really useful. Use these as a helpful framework to understand and get better. 

Remember John C. Maxwell’s quote, “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward”. It’s a useful maxim in product management. Just like a child learning to walk, each stumble brings you closer to walking.

Conclusion

Handling failure as a product manager isn’t about avoiding it altogether. It’s about embracing it as a vital part of the learning process. By changing your mindset, practicing letting go, leaning into your superpower, and fostering a supportive culture, you can turn failures into stepping stones towards success. So, start your “Failure Days,” share your experiences, and let’s learn to fail forward together. Embrace the journey, and remember—every failure is a step closer to a better product.

Is there any one out there with a fear of failing? What are some tips you have found to help you overcome this fear? Comment below