Taming the failure to achieve success

And if we planned our failures in a positive way? This was decided to entrepreneurs by sharing their troubles in front of hundreds of people, with great reinforcement of anecdotes and details. The iconoclasts? Not really. Rather precursors having understood that failing can ultimately help them succeed. On stage, each tells his mistakes and what they learned from it. And that’s the whole point of FailCon, contraction failure and conference: people come to listen, not the prowess of the players but their bellies. “All mostly tell about how they bounced back,” says Benjamin Böhle-Wren, Managing Director of Ekito, a start-up accelerator. Their watery speeches are never quite the contrary. This is not the ball of losers!”

In San Francisco, where they were born, these conferences dedicated to failure were a great success from the first edition in 2009. When she wanted to import the concept in Paris, two years later, Roxanne Varza met more difficulties and reticence. “At first, finding sponsors and stakeholders, it was the cross and the banner recalls at the head of a start-up support program at Microsoft. Most brands do not want to see their logo associated with the word ‘failure’, deemed too drab. No one dared to reveal recounting his own experience. Since the mind is characterised in companies with an operating mode that stimulates innovation, it has spread. Many large groups have joined us. They understood the importance of establishing a culture of failure. Without it, there is no risk taking, so no creativity.”

FAIL TO BOUNCE BACK

The turning point? The FailCon was held in April 2014 in Bercy, the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Minister Fleur Pellerin, who launched a few months before his ‘rebound Charter’ to end the stigma of entrepreneurial failure, had made ​​an appearance, as did the Secretary of State for the digital Axelle Lemaire. “The event then took on a new dimension,” says Roxanne Varza. Since then, FailCon and FailChat (a shorter version of the event) swarm around Toulouse, Grenoble, Montpellier, Barcelona, ​​Tel Aviv, Porto Alegre… The evenings lose to even the Fuck Up Nights (Fun). Free afterworks of which take place every two months in Paris. “Three entrepreneurs share their setback in front of a cafe of, on average, fifty people,” tells organiser Elisa Lheureux. The failure remains something painful, but something people talk more easily about today. It feels good to know what successful people have planted in the past. Exchange also helps to learn from others’ mistakes.”

Stationed at their beginnings to web entrepreneurs, these events highlighting failure begin to open to other business sectors. Thus the former Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy came to tell his own tales at FailCon Toulouse in November 2014. “For the second edition, which gathered more than 200 people last June, we asked a senior customs official, a marketing director, even a music producer,” says Benjamin Böhle-Wren, organiser of the Toulouse event.

In parallel, associations helping entrepreneurs to rebound after bankruptcy have also increased: Second Souffle, SOS Contractors, Re-create… “The real question is not whether we failed or not, but what we did with this failure,” said Philippe Rambaud, founder of 60,000 rebounds, as the number of bankruptcies in France rise each year. We offer entrepreneurs in a dozen cities, a psycho-coaching so they use their misadventure as a springboard for success. This is essential, especially in our time when the vagaries of life are more important, but it is not something natural in France. Just because we have never learned to do so, especially at school.”

OUT OF HIS COMFORT ZONE

To remedy this lack, Essec, the ESSEC Business School based in Cergy-Pontoise (Val-d’Oise), launched, in September, a new seminar entitled “Confronting failure.” The originality? These are the students who have chosen to stake on this issue during a call for projects. “Since the explosion of the Internet bubble and the crisis, young people no longer see their linearly career,” management professor Fabrice Cavarretta analysed. “But in France, our relationship to failure is still very immature. From kindergarten to high schools, our educational system gratifies more and more the answer that the search results. The consequence? A lack of innovation and harmony with the world today. The objective of this course is to train future managers to come out in a predictable and causal logic to move towards an exploration of the possibilities available to them. It requires accepting to fumble, to tinker, to ignore certainties, multiple attempts… Exactly as we do in our love life!”

In his book Small workbook to recover from a failure*, the psychotherapist Filliozat Isabelle says the same thing. It also invites us to consider our flops another angle, not to deny them and not feel guilty. In the professional area, but not only that. “Whether they occur on the physical, emotional, social, financial, failures are always breaks in the course of our projects, the brakes in the life force,” she admits. “But why not see them as guides? The failure is the experience…if you know how to decode and do not lock us into the wound. And the straightest roads paved and many are not always the most interesting nor the richest. Long live the obstacles we come out of our comfort zone and open us to a meaningful life!”

*Youth

Fabienne Broucaret and Nur Syazana H.