Inc.com – How to Fail Early And Fail CheapEstimated Reading Time: just 3 min

As reported on Inc.com:

One of the fundamental concepts I learned as an engineer was the cost of repairing an error. The key lesson was that it’s always cheaper to fix an error early on. What’s interesting is that you can this same lesson in your business today in all your processes.

To show you what I mean, let’s use an example from the world of design engineering where I learned this idea. Let’s say that I am designing a new product and I find an error on my blueprint or on my CAD system. At this point, the cost to fix this error might be $1, literally a few clicks of the mouse.

If that same mistakes makes it through to the prototyping and testing stage, it is more expensive to repair.  Perhaps $10.  The design must be redone, and the prototypes need to be fabricated, costing money and time.

Now, let’s go to the next step: production. If I begin manufacturing my product and, in a quality testing phase, uncover an error in my design, this is now going to cost me $100–or 100-times the cost if I had found it during the design phase.  Of course, the lost time is far more material as well.

But what happens if I begin making the product at scale and ship it out into the market to my customers only to uncover the design flaw then, forcing me to recall the product and completely reengineer it? At that point, the error will cost me $1,000–or 1,000-times the cost if I could have uncovered it early on.

I have seen something similar happen to a client of mine. They shipped out a product to their customers only to discover that a piece of metal failed after minimal use. It then cost them millions of dollars to recall and fix that product to the point where it was acceptable to their customers.

The expensive lesson this company learned was that the longer you go before uncovering a design flaw, the more expensive it will be. They are designing a new product now and have doubled down on the early part of the design and validation process to make sure another expensive mistake doesn’t escape to the customers.

1. It’s More Than Just Failing Fast

The idea of “fail fast” has become increasingly popular these days. The idea is that you want to move quickly, experiment, and find things that don’t work before you invest more heavily in them. But we need to add to this rule by saying fail fast–and fail cheap. Don’t go too far into your launch process before realizing you have made an error.

Consider another example: cybersecurity. In the wake of the pandemic, where remote work has exploded, cybersecurity has become a top priority for every organization out there.

The challenge for organizations, though, is that as they roll out new infrastructure to support their remote workers, they might be trying to move fast. That likely means leaning on lots of workaround solutions because, in most cases, the company’s IT infrastructure was never designed with extensive remote work in mind.

2. It’s Failing Cheap

This is particularly true as they try to secure their information and access in this hastily constructed system.  It gets expensive and the solution will always be less than optimal.  If they security had been designed in from original principles by selection software and infrastructure that is natively secure, they system would be cheaper and superior.

What if, because you’re not taking the time to test those new changes–or even to rethink your entire IT approach and whether it can handle the changes–you’ve actually increased your risk of being hacked? What kind of cost could that represent to your business?

Again, the point is to uncover errors as early as possible in all processes so that you can fix them as cheaply as possible. And this rule applies to everything inside your business: product launches, pricing, marketing, websites, sales policies, and service offers. Fixing errors is far cheaper during the design phase than after you have deployed it into the field.

The goal should be to fit it when its cheap and to fail. If you can do that effectively, you’ll be winning!



Source: Inc.com
Author: Jim Schleckser
Date: 2020 12 15
Link: https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/how-to-fail-early-fail-cheap.html

PS To People Who Want To Find Must-Read Content but Can’t Get Started:

Get Rid of That Information Overload!

We read everything and we keep only Pro Content about:
– Business #Strategy
– #Startups Strategy
– #Growth Hacking
– Artificial Intelligence #ai

Why do we do it? Because #SharingIsCaring

Sharing is Caring!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

en_USEnglish
search previous next tag category expand menu location phone mail time cart zoom edit close