\u201cYou have to be willing to fail, and actually, not just willing, you actually have to go fail,\u201d Panay said. \u201cIf you haven\u2019t failed, you probably haven\u2019t pushed the boundary. It\u2019s literally about harvesting the lessons learned when you fail. You have to be willing to face it, and as you face it, learn from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panay said it\u2019s possible to recover from all sorts of failures, even catastrophic ones, noting that he experienced one himself at Microsoft. He described the launch of the Surface RT, Microsoft\u2019s first tablet computer, as a significant failure during his tenure at the company, one that ultimately led to a nearly $1 billion write-down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember being on the front cover of a newspaper, and it just said failure,\u201d Panay said. \u201cBut, here\u2019s the thing, it was easy to admit failure. The trick was, and always is, did you harvest the learnings and understand what happened? All right. What did you learn? Because the failure wasn\u2019t that moment. It was decisions that led up to it two years before that, whether the software wasn\u2019t complete or the inventory was wrong or how we balanced into retail. There were all these steps along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Image Credits:Kimberly White \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
He said founders need to be willing to understand what went wrong, and avoid making excuses, and ultimately accept the failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the other side of it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou want to succeed, yeah? You take that failure, but you don\u2019t let go of your vision. That\u2019s it. Surface has done pretty well. You don\u2019t let go of your vision. You don\u2019t break it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Panay emphasized the importance of staying committed to a vision, learning from experience, and moving quickly. He believes that by embracing failure and learning from setbacks, founders can adapt and make progress faster, even as they encounter new obstacles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt goes back to the same fundamental, like, have you learned?\u201d he said. \u201cWere you learning along the way? Because if you were learning, then you just change your vector. Usually, it\u2019s not 180 degrees. Usually, it\u2019s just 30 degrees. Take your lessons learned, change a little bit, adapt your vision where it needs to be, and then go. I believe there\u2019s people that hang on too long, but it\u2019s because they haven\u2019t accepted the moment of failure at all.\u201d<\/p>\n