Grace Miller - Fail Smarter: How Experimentation Drives Innovation
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Grace Miller, Head of Failure and Experimentation at The Studio, shares how embracing failure fuels creativity, why psychological safety is key to innovation, and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
Career
“Head of Failure and Experimentation” is a very distinctive title. Can you tell us how this role came about, and what it actually involves day to day?
Before moving into this role I was in Steven’s social media team and naturally was already experimenting and sharing learnings but didn’t know it was called “experimentation”. Then about two years ago Steve asked if I’d like to start a new department called “Failure and Experimentation”, I had no idea what it meant other than companies like Amazon and Tesla were doing similar things so I thought “why not take the leap”. And it was the best decision I ever made now getting to work with the whole team to help them innovate, experiment and try new things within their roles to grow! I’ve always been a people person so it really felt like the perfect role of helping others grow and contributing to the wider business too.
What have been some of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned about embracing “failure” as part of the creative process?
One of my favourite books on failure is by Amy Edmondson who is the professor of leadership at Harvard Business School. It’s called “Right Kind of Wrong - How the best teams use failure to succeed” and explains why humans naturally avoid failure, how we can get better at embracing it but also what type of failure is good and bad (yes there’s a good type of failure)! The book really opened my eyes to what ‘failure’ means and how we can actually use it to our advantage for growth if we learn how to intelligently fail (You’ll have to read the book to understand what that means). The most important part of failure is that we learn from it, whether it’s learning what to do next time or what to avoid, as long as we’re learning from it then it’s valuable.
Looking back, what advice would you give your younger self starting out in this industry?
I would tell her to keep saying “yes” to every opportunity that feels right. The best thing I ever did in my early career was take all the opportunities to learn, ask questions or gain experience because you never know when that experience might be useful.
Fail Smarter: How Experimentation Drives Innovation
What does “experimentation” mean in practice at The Studio, and how do you create an environment where people feel safe to test and learn?
It’s all about trust and relationships. I had worked in the team for two years before I moved into the experimentation role and had built relationships with my colleagues so they knew we were all striving towards the same ambitious goal and were always there to support each other. If you want someone to share their ideas (or failures) with you, they have to feel comfortable that it’s a judgment free zone and they won’t be laughed out of the room, really it’s all about psychological safety in a team.
Failure is often seen as negative — how do you reframe it to make it a driver of innovation and progress?
It really comes from the team leader or management leading by example to show the team that failure isn’t something that should be swept under the rug but actually it’s something that happens to everyone and the more we face it head on and learn from it, the faster we’ll grow rather than trying to avoid it.
What factors do you think make an experiment successful in terms of producing useful learnings?
One of the most important things in experimentation is sharing the results. Whether it’s a failure, success or even inconclusive, the most important part is that the rest of your team can learn from it so that we move at a faster rate of learning.
With platforms and algorithms evolving constantly, how do you decide which areas are worth experimenting with, and which should remain stable?
This really depends on your business goals and what your main areas of focus for growth are. If it’s wanting to grow your social media presence then it would be experimenting on social platforms but if it’s growing an email list then your experimentation would happen in other areas.
Quick-fire questions
What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
You should never regret the things you do, you should only regret the things you don’t do. So why not try?
The social platform you find most exciting right now?
Some people may not see it as a traditional social platform but I love YouTube! They’re constantly experimenting with new features and ways to make the platform even better for their users. What stands out to me is when a platform comes up with new innovative features or algorithms instead of just copying what’s happening on other platforms and YouTube always seems to be ahead of the trend.
A brand or creator you think is truly pushing the boundaries of experimentation?
Kane Kallaway is a social media creator who is changing the game. He is constantly experimenting on all his channels but the best part is that he doesn’t gatekeep. He shares all his experiments AND results in his email newsletter so people can really understand what went well and what didn’t. The knowledge sharing is truly unmatched. I sound like I’m being paid by Kane to promote him but I’ve never even met or spoken to him, I just love what he’s doing and changing this previous ‘secrecy’ of strategy in the social media world.
What’s one myth about “failure” you’d like to debunk?
People think that they’ll lose trust or respect from their colleagues when they share a failure, but what they don’t realise is it’s usually the complete opposite. What happens when we’re vulnerably honest is that people trust you more, they value your knowledge and want to work closer with you. A team that can be brutally honest with each other will succeed faster than ones who aren’t.
What’s one thing you’re still hoping to achieve in your career?
I’d love to learn more from some of the top experimenters and data scientists in the world to further develop my knowledge and understanding of the industry!
Grace will be speaking on The Future of Digital Marketing Stage about Experimentation in the age of algorithms at 10:35 - 11:00 on Wednesday 24th September
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