How to Fail Faster—and Better

TNC's Agility Lab, an initiative meant to modernize the organization’s approach to conservation, found that on average, it was taking 12-18 months to get ideas out of the office and into the wild, so to speak.

Meanwhile, recent UN reports warn that our global society has until 2030 to transition away from business-as-usual before we hit a tipping point, triggering runaway climate change and biodiversity loss. At the current pace off innovation, that gives us, at most, nine tries to test and scale projects made for global impact across sectors. 

That’s why many conservationists are shifting to an entrepreneurial mentality, aiming for learning cycles measured in weeks and months, instead of years. While we’re excited for what new breakthroughs technology may deliver in the future, here’s how we can use “rapid adaptive management” to maximize the solutions already at our disposal.

1. Learn by doing.

We’re living in a time of extraordinary uncertainty (what will climate change and biodiversity loss—not to mention sociopolitical shakeups—throw at us next?) and incredible risk. But there’s too much at stake for us to let fear lead to paralysis, or perpetual planning processes. When an idea seems to be languishing in the seed stage, what if we asked ourselves what we could do in the next two months and how new learnings could catalyze our next steps? 

2. Test assumptions in the real world—but start small.

Of course, it’s also maladaptive to execute without a clear plan. Adaptive management means identifying challenges and goals, mapping strategies and defining outcomes before breaking ground. As we take action, we must constantly test our assumptions, or hypotheses; measure the resulting outcomes; and adapt again and again with an eye toward scaling up for global impact.