So I've been working on a project for a couple of months now and hitting all kinds of snags. I had a long conversation with a close friend, and he made a statement that sounded pretty ridiculous. At first!

So I had been taking more time to ensure that my content was perfect and ticked all the boxes to drive engagement, which was giving me more than my fair share of headaches. I was speaking to my friend about it, and I expected a sort of understanding, seeing as he had some idea about the project. Instead, he asked, "why?" And almost immediately, I reply, "why not? The client wants results, bro; I should take my time to ensure we're using the best strategy" And he says, "so fail then. Failure is as good a result as success is."

I'm looking at this guy with an itch in my hand to turn that yellow cheek red with a well-placed Alaba-style slap! This guy doesn't stop. He goes on to say one of the most ridiculously eye-popping things I've heard in my life. Here's an excerpt from the conversation; it's not word for word but it’s accurate.

If you have a budget of a billion to achieve an objective in 12 months, 15 percent is your failure budget. You take the first 5%, begin immediately, and see what happens in 3 months. Of course, you're most likely going to blow through the money on mistakes and errors, but you've spent 5% learning what not to do with the remaining 95%. You get the next 5%, and you're failing fast at this project in another three months. In 6 months, you've failed at meeting the objective, but you've moved forward and spent 10% finding out what not to do.

At six months, you should clearly understand whether to spend another 5% failing or if you've gathered sufficient learning to move on with the project full-scale. The trick is that investors will be more pleased with a person who has moved forward with a project, discovering what landmines to avoid, even though this learning comes at some cost over another who's doing a lot of study and research, waiting for the perfect alignment to launch out. Guy, all the research and historical data in the world cannot tell you with certainty the best course of action. All it can do is suggest.

This information blew my mind. This guy just popped something in my brain. I knew this concept in theory but not from a practical standpoint. It made sense! 

Today's marketplace is highly uncertain and volatile. This minute's data can become irrelevant in the next minute. In an uncertain environment, conventional research has little or no impact. This means you'll likely find yourself making the same mistakes as the guy who moved on with the project and failed with 15% of his budget. Still, you'll make worse mistakes because you'll be trying out your entire capital on an untested idea simply because you refused to fail forward. 

I quickly began to research, failing forward. I've been amazed at how much major household brands have adopted the strategy and how it has helped boost revenue margins. 

Many successful ventures are built on failed projects. Apple's Macintosh computers emerged partly from the ashes of a now-forgotten product called Lisa, which introduced several graphical user interfaces and mouse operations in today's computers. 

Microsoft's successful entrant in the game business, the Xbox 360, was developed by a team that worked on four failed projects: 3DO's failed game console, the unsuccessful WebTV, Apple's problematic video card business, and Microsoft's own short-lived

UltimateTV. Because this team had had several failed experiences, the team members could spot warning signs and make smart course corrections. For example, the earlier Xbox had used expensive chips from outside manufacturers and reportedly lost about $4 billion from 2001 to 2005. The Xbox 360 team chose different manufacturers, worked closely with them to develop the chips, and retained intellectual property rights, allowing the system to generate profits early on. 

Suppose failure is unavoidable and business is designed for profit. Does it not make sense to find a way to harness failure and maximize it to provide the best impact on your business? 

The key to failing fast is to develop enough of your idea to determine whether it works and to what degree. Failing fast requires a culture where the team has the freedom to fail but can learn something from each failure that helps the team succeed faster the next time. 

Imagine yourself in a 10-week beginner's pottery course. Half of the students spend ten weeks working on one clay pot. For those students, the overall grade for the course is based on the quality of that one pot. The other half of the students make as many pots as possible; their grades are based on the quality of pots that they create. At the end of the ten weeks, an independent expert is brought in to see which pots are the best. 

Which half of the class will likely have a higher percentage of great pots? 

Experiment after experiment suggests that the 'trial and error' group will have more great pots because they must try different ideas and techniques. As such, they can more quickly find ideas that work and then use those ideas to produce and reproduce excellent results.

As David Kelley, a foremost expert on design thinking, states, "Enlightened trial and error beats the panning of the lone genius."