Learning from failure.
(aka, mistakes were made)Back in 2018, Matt Healey ran a session at the Australasian Evaluation Society conference where a room full of evaluators talked, honestly, about the times things went wrong. We worked through what those moments had taught us and wrote it down together. This is that thinking, tidied up and shared, with a few tools you are welcome to use yourself.
“We messed up.
Then we worked out
what it taught us.”
Failure is having a moment — just not for evaluators.
Funders are asking for braver, more experimental approaches to genuinely hard social and environmental problems. That has pulled a lot of us towards design thinking, human-centred design and co-design, all of which are built on a simple idea: try something, expect to get parts of it wrong, and learn as you go.
Evaluators tend to be wired the other way. Failure is a risk to be managed, not something to celebrate. When something does go wrong, we usually keep it to ourselves, because failing can mean letting down a client, a stakeholder, or the very community we set out to help. So we carry the lesson quietly and move on — and the next person learns it the hard way too.
This session was an attempt to sit in that tension for an hour. Could we, as a group, talk openly about our mistakes, work out what they actually taught us, and pass that on, including to evaluators just starting out?
There is a whole strand of education research arguing that making errors is a normal, even necessary, part of learning — you just have to make it safe enough to talk about them. (Steuer, Tulis & Peterson, 2025; Shallenberger, 2015)
What we mean when we talk about messing up.
Before the rest of it makes sense, three small ideas do most of the heavy lifting.
First, a mistake is not a failure. A mistake is a wrong turn you can correct and carry on from. A failure is when the path itself runs out and you have to start a new one. Both are worth learning from, but the useful next question is different for each: after a mistake, how do I get back on track; after a failure, what did the old path teach me, and what is the new one?
Second, not all mistakes are equal. Some are careless slips you would happily design out. Others are the happy accidents that teach you something, or the brave stretch that did not quite come off. A quick way to tell them apart (below) comes from Mindset Works.
Third, and most importantly, the lesson does not arrive on its own. We would like to think it comes bundled with the failure. It usually does not. Failure stings, so we look away to protect ourselves; and it is genuinely hard to read, because working out what went wrong takes more effort than repeating what worked. Those two pulls — one emotional, one practical — both lead away from the lesson (Fishbach, in press; Carlson & Fishbach, 2024). Which is exactly why it helps to slow down and do it on purpose.
Aha (Eureka)
It worked, but you did not know in advance that it would. The lesson is hiding in why it worked.
Stretch
You gave something new a real go without being sure of it. Being challenged in a way that is new to you.
Careless
A slip, usually under time pressure or because you did not ask for help. The kind worth designing out.
High-stakes
Everything was on the line and it did not go your way. Not much to do but take stock honestly afterwards.
Categories adapted from Mindset Works, ‘Types of Mistakes’, described here in our own words.
Six principles to support learning from failure.
During the session everyone shared an experience and, in small groups, drafted the principles they thought mattered most. We stuck them up, talked them over, and used coloured dots to mark the ones that resonated. Afterwards we gathered everything together into the six below. They are not rules. Think of them as reminders for how to approach this sort of thing.
Clarity
Be willing to say ‘I don’t understand’. Agree how you will work together early, so uncertainty has somewhere to go.
Culture & context are everything
Know the context you are working in and let it shape what you do. Treat culture as central, not a box to tick.
Check your assumptions
Most of them are unspoken. Surface them, get an outside view, and test your thinking against people and models you trust.
Ask for help, give it too
Asking is a strength. Build a habit where it is normal to offer help and to ask for it, and where both are met the same way.
Plan ahead
Be deliberate. Build in moments to stop, review and reflect. A pause is not lost time.
Stay humble
You are more capable than you give yourself credit for, and you will never have it all figured out. Both are true at once.
The kit.
Here is everything from the session, cleaned up and free to use — whether you are reflecting on your own, with your team, or running the session yourself.
The reflection canvas
A single sheet for thinking through one mistake or failure in a sitting: what happened, why, and what you would do differently. The A3 is good for a wall or a table; the A4 prints anywhere.
The supplement
The thinking behind it all in a bit more depth: the kinds of mistakes, why the lesson is easy to miss, the six principles, and the reading we leaned on.
The six principles
A one-page version of the principles, ready to print, pin up or pass around the team.
The process outline
Everything you need to run the safe-space session with your own group: a run sheet, the two activities, and a few tips for keeping it honest.
We didn’t make this up on our own.
The session ran mostly on instinct and shared experience, but plenty of people have thought about this more carefully than we did in our hour. If you want to dig in, these are good places to start.
A couple of the ideas here are borrowed: the four kinds of mistake come from Mindset Works, and the way we separate mistakes from failures follows Jurgen Appelo. The biggest thanks, though, go to the evaluators who were honest in the room at aes18. The six principles are theirs, not ours.