
Permission to Fail - RKoutnik
https://keen.io/blog/135255657976/permission-to-fail
======
mwetzler
Hi there. Thanks for reading my piece. I was delighted when one of my
teammates informed it was trending on HN today. Then I noticed there were 7
comments and I got pretty anxious. I was nearly too afraid to click and read
them. But now that I'm here, wow, I don't know what to say. I'm tearing up,
flooded with relief, filled with gratitude that people seem to understand not
only I what I was trying to say, but a little bit of what we are trying to do
with Keen. Thank you.

It's probably an overshare, but this is one of the first things I've published
since returning from maternity leave. I was feeling more vulnerable than
usual, and the support from the community means a lot to me personally. Thanks
again.

~~~
pla3rhat3r
So moved by this post! I wish more CEOs had the courage to post their feelings
about how tough it is to keep things together in the face of adversity. This
is well thought out, well worded, and completely amazing. THANK YOU for
putting a spotlight on what is something most CEOs are afraid to talk about
for fear that it makes them look weak. Bravo! Keep it coming. Keen.io is an
amazing product and I wish you and your team all the best!

------
tomcam
Looks like I have to play bad cop here. I appreciate the openness, but as a
potential customer... not so much. Because while sentences like this are kind
of inspiring:

    
    
      Instead, let’s give ourselves permission to fail.
      ...
      And you know what? It’s okay if we’re not. If Keen busts, we’ll all find new grand adventures. 
    

As a (no longer) potential customer, they clash harshly with this one:

    
    
      In last week’s outage, we had our first major data loss in over 12 months.
    

Because you know what? When I trust you with my money and my company's data, I
don't want those precious assets to be with someone who's been given
permission to fail. I really do want it to be someone who tells the troops
this: "Let’s double-down, work through the weekend, push through the issues,
get ‘er done, rally!"

The issue to me is public declarations vs private thoughts.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with waking up covered in flop sweat,
wondering if you're destroyed your business and the job situations of people
you genuinely like and appreciate.

However, I've found that a good part of leadership is, in fact, shutting the
hell up when "routine" bad things are happening because too much openness can
stress out employees. By "routine" I mean pretty much anything other than the
certain death of the company, at which time they deserve reasonably early
notice).

~~~
mwetzler
Hi Tom. I was anticipating a response like this and I'm glad you shared your
perspective. One of the reasons this piece was difficult to share is that the
last thing that I want my customers thinking about is failure.

Let me clarify one thing (and perhaps I should do this in the blog post as
well?). Our team cares incredibly deeply about our commitments to our
customers and their data. I 100% agree with you that we can _and should_
double-down and work through the weekend when that's what it takes to maintain
that commitment.

The thing is, we already do that, and our team was already doing it at the
time I wrote this message. People at Keen take their responsibilities to our
customers and to each other very seriously. That's why we haven't had another
loss since then, now almost 12 months later. When I wrote this message, the
problem wasn't that people weren't working hard enough. It was that we were
stressed out and burnout was becoming a risk. In this situation, reminding
people to take a deep breath and get some perspective seemed to be really
helpful.

There definitely is a time and a place to rally and to push through, and we
have plenty of experience with that too :)

~~~
tomcam
Love the evenhanded answer, Michelle. And I can't tell you how similar I used
to be in that regard. I believed stoutly in a sort of open source management
approach and promised myself when I was a youth I would do precisely as you
are doing. Over the years I have found it to be suboptimal. Thousands of
years' worth of management theory turn out to be a useful precedent. But--and
I mean this sincerely--I hope it works for you. Would be a better world, I
think, if your way worked best.

~~~
jessep
My instinct is that this post being on the front of HN, along with the tenor
of the comments, is evidence of it working. I'd wager that her post is serving
as an incredibly effective piece of content marketing. HN is the perfectly
audience for Keen's product, and getting on the front of HN for a full day is
a big win both for reaching customers and new recruits. Certainly some people
will have your reaction, but another significant percentage will have a
positive reaction, as demonstrated in the comments.

------
avitzurel
"Companies" tend to be this faceless creature. You saw one you saw them all.

Posts like this make companies about the people, as it should. Open atmosphere
outside the company leads to open atmosphere inside the company and the other
way around.

If you talk about the failures inside the company it makes people connect, it
makes them understand what you are about, maybe this random engineer or QA
guy/gal will have the idea to push you through?

Companies love to share big number, new clients, no one ever shares challenges
and bad things happening. In this VC run world you are running scared that it
will say something about you.

Great post. Kudos to the Keen team.

~~~
JohnHammersley
This is such an important point, and it's very easy to overlook the internal
comms (whilst all the while being open and personable to the outside).

One thing that really, really helped us was our angel investors asking for a
monthly update. They were very hands off, but just wanted to be kept in the
loop about what was going on.

Aside from it taking a while to get out of the habit of 'putting off sending
the email until the next big piece of company news was out' (which is never a
good idea), it was amazing to see the different reactions to sending them a
very personal, informal email with updates not only about the company but
about the team as well, rather than just a fact / numbers based 'company
update'.

I'm sure this is obvious to anyone on the outside, but it's so easy to miss
the internal stuff when you're growing (both traction and team). I highly
recommend that anyone starting a business finds someone they trust (investor
or not) with whom they can send such a monthly update. Not only will it help
put things in perspective, it's good practice for when it's necessary to write
ones to the team like this one from Keen.

~~~
avitzurel
Not discussing the bad things has the opposite effect of what people think.
Most employees know that something not good is going with the company. Not
discussing it makes people wonder if it's bad or worse.

If I was looking for a new job, I would apply to Keen right now, saying "Hey,
I think I can help here...". As an employee inside the company I would be
extra creative and incentivized to make sure everything I do has an impact.

------
cjcenizal
Success can have a strange effect. It raises the bar for you. The merit of
your accomplishments become relative to what you did yesterday. If you don't
out-perform past results, you're failing. And if you're failing... then aren't
you a failure?

I think we forget that failure is the default state. Which redefines success
to be __making any attempt at all __. Like Edison said: "I have not failed.
I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

~~~
mudge
A person only fails when he/she stops trying.

~~~
vitd
I get what you mean, but I feel like sometimes it's important to just stop if
you're repeatedly failing at something. I often find that taking a break
(stopping trying for a bit) gives my subconscious time to breathe and figure
out what my conscious brain couldn't.

------
stephenitis
I'm always delighted to see how open and touching blog posts by the Keen.io
team can be.

I wish more companies took to making their blogs more open to content such as
this.

Are there other good examples of companies that take on this ethos?

Are there particular activities or strategies that make this kind of open
writing more comfortable amongst a company?

------
dawnbreez
This may be the most important lesson we can learn nowadays. Between demand
for ever-higher test scores, and demand for ever-more-inoffensive worlds, and
demand for ever-more perfect people, we forget that failure isn't game over.

------
USNetizen
After seeing more and more of these "we failed" pieces pop up here, I commend
the authors for sharing something so intimate. However, these are starting to
strike me as those "everyone gets a trophy" competitions where the goal is
sharing the best failure stories and getting a reaffirming pat on the back for
things going wrong. I'm of the supposed generation that is labeled with this
"we're all winners regardless of what place we finish in the race" mentality,
but I don't get it. This is where that stereotype comes from.

This is perfectly exemplified by the "if Keen busts...we'll move on" wording
that is pervasive in this. Nevermind the amounts of time, effort and (other
people's) money that went into building something, and the jobs and families
that count on a paycheck. The whole "we'll just pat ourselves on the back and
move on" way of doing business forgets that there are victims and potentially
long-reaching impacts for every failure. It can't be that simple and easy to
walk away, it really shouldn't be.

People fail, startups fail, etc. all the time. But it's starting to sound like
a competition to see who failed the best the more of these I read. It just
seems like attention-seeking behavior sometimes, or maybe just slick marketing
perhaps to try and boost that falling revenue. Who knows. I mean, it made it
to the top of HN, right? Probably got a few thousand eyeballs out of that at
the very least for free.

On the other hand, posting about failure and turmoil for a going business
concern can't be good for customer retention. If I were a competitor, I'd jump
all over this opportunity to lure some of those lucrative clients away by
leveraging the fear of investing their time, money and effort into a
potentially problem-riddled organization that by-and-large accepts, even
embraces, a high rate of failure. Large enterprises don't like hearing about
these types of problems with their vendors as they are inherently quite risk
averse. Ultimately, I fear that this company, and others that have done the
same, will soon realize this but it'll too late to save themselves from a
flight of customers. Hey, who knows, prove me wrong.

Anyway, just my opinion. I'm not trying to be negative, but just relaying a
different perspective from someone who's been around the industry for some
time.

~~~
paulddraper
In hard times, there's a balance of concern between totally uninvested and
stressed out of one's mind. In circumstances like the ones described, most
people tend toward the latter. As an employee, this would be very welcome and
probably very helpful in making the most of the situation.

That said, it's crazy that they posted it for their customers to read. Hearing
that my vendor has a "can fail" attitude isn't reassuring. I'd rather hear
that my vendor is comprised of low-maintenance caffeine fueled super robots
that keep their commitments with the stubbornness of a thousand donkeys. (I
know they're probably not, but when choosing vendors, I'm usually working with
limited info.)

So...cool memo, weird post, nice thoughts.

~~~
kaitai
One problem with hearing that your vendor is comprised of low-maintenance
caffeine fueled super robots that keep their commitments with the stubbornness
of a thousand donkeys is knowing that your vendor probably has some slick liar
salesmen giving you that line. What else do you not know then?

~~~
kyllo
Exactly the problem. When you make failure unacceptable, people will stil fail
anyway, they will just try their damndest to hide it. If you punish people for
giving you bad news, they will simply stop giving it to you, even when bad
things do happen, and they always do.

~~~
paulddraper
There is probably some truth there, but I think you are missing reality.

Next time you try to make a sale, express how reluctant you and your coworkers
are to recommend the product to their friends.

~~~
kyllo
It's not black and white like you think. I used to work as an outside sales
rep. Experienced people know that shit breaks in real life. They care more
about how you deal with failure.

I've actually heard rumors of companies _purposefully_ fucking up little
things with new customers in order to take the opportunity to demonstrate how
good their customer service is when they fix the mistake. Because vendors are
pretty equivalent when things go right, but they differentiate themselves by
how they handle it when things go wrong, and that earns loyalty.

------
cushychicken
It's so nice to see some humanity out of the startup community every once in a
while. It gets so old and, dare I say, fake, to see everyone making a big show
of how they're killing it all the time. That's not real life. This is.

------
doug1001
""Still, I appreciate this time to reflect when our confidence is shaken a
bit. To be honest, we were probably overdue for it."

probably the best thing from a CEO i have ever read. That said, the bar's not
terribly high--depending on the CEO, or their mood, or the circumstances, "all
hands memos" are nearly always (in my experience) tirelessly optimistic
propaganda with no regard for the data, or just the opposite, i.e., "sure
we're doing great, but we'd be doing twice as good if you lazy bastards would
stop screwing off!" This CEO actually had the courage to send to everyone, a
snapshot of their thoughts at that moment. I doubt they teach this in MBA
school.

~~~
tedmiston
I believe Michelle is one of the earliest employees, but she's not the CEO or
a founder.

~~~
doug1001
thanks for the correction--and looking at the Post again, nowhere does it say
or suggest she's the CEO nor anything else about her job title. It was just my
incorrect assumption based on the content of the memo

------
neom
Amazingly beautiful people, all of them. Love the Keen team and truly hope
they find whatever success they are seeking. <3

------
defenestration
'You don't have to do this.' ~ So true, and so easy to forget

------
steinsgate
I have also struggled with the same problem in the past: I couldn't stop
obsessing about my work. I worked like a maniac. I expected the team to do the
same, and drove them to the edge. We burned out after a while. At that point,
I realized that startups are probably not for me. While I can work like a
maniac, I don't like the effect it has on my well being. At that point I
decided, I would rather go for small businesses, where the stress level is
much lower and things are chill. The difference between a startup and a small
business is outlined rather well in this Medium post.
[https://medium.com/swlh/you-think-you-re-a-startup-but-
you-r...](https://medium.com/swlh/you-think-you-re-a-startup-but-you-re-
really-a-small-business-and-that-s-totally-cool-too-cd45ff80e6be#.rauyfyqpp)

------
lquist
I have to disagree with the formulation of your advice. I totally agree that
you should give yourself permission to fail, but I think it's important that
this is only in the short term. In the long term, you can never give up (this
does not mean that you shouldn't be flexible and pivot). As PG says, "If you
can just avoid dying, you get rich."
([http://paulgraham.com/die.html](http://paulgraham.com/die.html))

------
tedmiston
Last month my startup closed our B round, led by Intel. While the change in
pressure is a much smaller magnitude than what you're dealing with, for us the
second-guessing is definitely stronger now. We analyze what we do more and
question a lot of the things we spend time on. I knew there'd be more
pressure, but I wasn't expecting such a sweeping wave.

------
ianamartin
I think the naming of things comes in to play here a little bit.

I think this piece would not have attracted the negativity it has here if it
were entitled something a bit different, and I think, truer to the intent:
Permission to be Human. Edited to add: I do very much appreciate that you
wrote this and made it public. I think there's an empathy in your voice that's
sorely lacking in the industry.

------
papercruncher
I was one of those affected by the mentioned data loss and inconsistency
issues. Even though I kept backups, I was fairly annoyed at the time, but now
I'm glad to see they moved past it and things are stable.

------
djsumdog
Sites seems down. Mirror?

