Instead of survival bias and brinksmanship I’m rooting for trier’s bias!

This post is written by Victoria Camp currently on maternity leave from Caerphilly Council.

• The problem: The notion of failing to ultimately succeed is talked of often in business and it’s prevalent in much of our everyday life.

• Why it matters: Needing to fail before help is offered is a damaging way of thinking. Many of our legislative and cultural practices require failure before assistance is provided.

• The solution: We should instead applaud people for trying and encourage people to ask for support and help when they need it - and be committed to providing that help.

In the transformation, commercial and innovative spaces we often hear and talk about how we want people to feel comfortable failing. We can learn from our failures; we don’t know who we are until we are kicked down and get back up again. In fact, on doing a quick Google search we can find endless images, memes and studies about how important it is to fail and develop resilience. I don’t disagree with this ethos and it’s one professionally I have focused on with my colleagues, but my emphasis is on trying, not failing.

Recently I’ve been viewing the cultural shift of organisations hoping to develop continuous improvement mindsets as something else too though: as symptomatic of our legislative and cultural practices which require failure before assistance. And I do not subscribe to this way of thinking – in fact I think it is a very damaging way of thinking still prevalent in much of our everyday life.

"It struck me then as it does now that a system that requires, rather than allows, for failure is really not a sensible system at all."

Some cases in point

I recall being an elected member for Chelmsford City Council, way back, when a young father contacted me to say he was in dire straits. He knew he had a few months left before he would not be able to pay his rent, his landlord was not understanding and he needed help from his local council. We attended a meeting together with the council housing officer, a lovely woman who was following procedure and providing an empathetic ear. Ultimately, however, the outcome was ‘computer says no’.

Essentially, they told the man that he and his three young kids needed to be made technically homeless before the council could offer help, which would involve putting the family in temporary accommodation – most likely a B&B – for an undefined amount of time. They had a discretionary fund –£1500 I think – which for the South East of England, won’t get you far. It struck me then as it does now that a system that requires, rather than allows, for failure is really not a sensible system at all.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself in some financial difficulty and remember being given advice from one of the free money advice services. Again, the advice was that I needed to default on my outstanding debts before certain remedies and assistance were available to me. I even called the credit card companies and banks to explain that, much like the father in the case above, I could see what was coming and could they do something to help me avoid the inevitable. But alas, once again the message was essentially ‘you need to completely fall over before we can do anything to help’.

Most recently, as a parent of a small baby in a new town with no support network, I found myself needing help. I visited the GP and made it clear I was isolated, low, and struggling with life and yet the message was yet again that things need to get much worse before there is any help and then the help is not really the sort of help you want – more intervention than enabling support.

I speak to lots of parents, all of whom tell me they just need an occasional booster of help – financially, at home, or with domestic situations; just a little something and this would see them through. Instead, the more you cope, the closer you skate to the line of failure but don’t actually cross it, the less inclined the systems are to help you – in fact they are deliberately designed that way.

Then COVID came along…

During COVID we saw the opposite. We witnessed systems and guidelines being abandoned and people being helped – not just when they fell over, but also when they asked. We saw food banks abandon usual guidelines, social services acting outside their usual strict guidelines, care systems and support networks being created to support people who had simply asked for help and in most cases helping them with whatever they needed. It wasn’t just food shopping or picking up prescriptions, it was a conversation, it was communicating with families, it was helping people to cope with day-to-day life. And look how successful all that was in bringing communities together, empowering staff to help and step into the grey area and no longer hide behind the rules and regulations.

"Let’s not subscribe to the brinkmanship way of thinking which I think is often celebrated as part of innovation and instead applaud people for trying."

From survive to thrive

So all of this has left me wondering about this idea of failure and how much we push people to experience failure as some sort of badge of honour or as a way of proving that they really need help, or in a professional setting as a way of demonstrating innovation – ‘look, we tried this and it totally backfired but at least we are innovating’. Are these actually healthy messages to be sending out? Is this the best way to enable people to develop coping strategies, to grow, to survive?

Perhaps a better message would be simply to encourage people to ask for support and help when they need it and be committed to providing that help. If we create environments where it’s encouraged and rewarded to say “I don’t have all the answers” or “I’m struggling” or “ I NEED HELP NOW” and people are provided with the help and support they need to move from survival to thrive – surely that’s better, more efficient and, let’s be honest, cheaper than celebrating or limiting support to total failure only. In fact we could even reward people for having the foresight to see what was coming. Let’s not subscribe to the brinkmanship way of thinking which I think is often celebrated as part of innovation and instead applaud people for trying.

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(Image Credit: Unsplash)