One of the major themes of the Libraries@cambridge conference last week was, surprisingly, failure and how to incorporate it into your development plan. It did not sound like a terribly exciting topic however somehow I ended up at both sessions devoted to the subject.
This is the image from the day that was most re-tweeted: that of a broken bowl that had been fixed using gold, to signify that the cracks were not to be hidden but should be refined and celebrated as a treasured part of the history of the object.
The speakers at the Failure Panel (Martin French, Senior Library Assistant, SPRI; Claire Sewell, Research Skills Coordinator, Cambridge University Library; Marta Teperek, Research Data Facility Manager, Cambridge University Library) all emphasised that failure hurt but was a necessary part of any enterprise. Marta explained how scientific research works, how you set out to prove something and end up investigating something else. She said that the only failure in science should be a failure to use rigorous scientific methods, and that any rigorous investigation was useful because it explored fields that needed exploring, even if the results of the exploration were not as predicted. She also spoke about how those trained in scientific research, such as herself, often ended up choosing different career paths, and how this should not be perceived as a failure but rather as a development.
Other speakers spoke about repeatedly applying for jobs and being rejected. Indeed, a member of the audience pointed out that it was quite wrong to use the word 'rejected' or 'winners' since in the job application there were many applicants and the one who most suited the institution's need was selected, nobody was 'rejected' or 'lost'. However, people do get upset if they don't get a job they applied for, and Ange Fitzpatrick stressed the need to allow ourselves Netflix and Chocolate periods to get over the upset before we move on, learn from the process, and reapply elsewhere. Several of the panel had applied for many jobs before eventually progressing in their career.
Dr Emma Coonan, whose Twitter feed is, appropriately, @LibGoddess, gave her plenary talk in the afternoon on the same theme. Her talk was more of a sermon than a talk and inspired, I imagine, all who heard her as something that will affect them and be remembered for years to come. It it was a very good talk indeed, and quite spiritual. She explained how she had applied for a job and been asked to describe an event that she had organised recently and to explain what went wrong there. The question came at the end of a long interview and after explaining that she had put on a conference for libraraians from across the world, she said it had been organised so well by the team that nothing had gone wrong at all. This was the question on which she did not score highly, and consequently she had not been appointed to the post.
Thinking about the experience afterwards Emma had come to realise that this ability to analyse performance, reflect and adjust was a key management skill. She used the word 'iterate' a lot, which, I confess, I had to look up. It means, as I'm sure you knew, to repeat yourself. I think she said that in our experience we will face similar situations again and again and we need to ensure that we learn from the past so that we can change our behavior when we encounter similar situations in future.
Emma talked about a lot of things in that hour and a half. She was obviously very well read, and she quoted the idea that failure should be rewarded, (because at least the perpetrator was trying to do something new) success questioned and inactivity penalised, which made us laugh but you can see the impeccable logic behind it. She also talked about developing yourself: when she was young, she said, she knew it was important to be very flexible to an organisations needs, but now she was older and had developed certain skills she was proud of, she was more discerning about which organisations she thought she could work with to maximise the benefit of her input.
Emma also explained why she was fond of the platypus. She said that in her early career she was a cataloguer, and she loved cataloguing because it involved finding a neat scientific niche for each creature. She explained how scientists were happy that they could fit every creature into their neat Linnean world until they discovered the platypus, which, like a Mammal, had mammaries, but unlike any other mammal they lay eggs, thus defeating any neat classification. An entire new order of mammals, the monotreme order, had to be devised to accomodate their existance. I think the moral of this tale is that you need to adapt your internal mapping of the world when it is at odds with reality.
I liked Emma's tale of the platypus because I myself am very fond of the eohippus, an animal which has adapted itself into the horse and has in this way survived since the age of the dinosaurs, fifty million years ago. I expect humans must have had some sort of ancestor around at that time but nobody knows what it was or can recognise one as such until about six million years ago. So eohippus wins on the adaptability front. Should we be eohippuses, adapting to suit, or platypuses, unique and awkwardly insisting that scientists re-write all the science books to accomodate our astonishing existance? Probably a bit of each.
This is the image from the day that was most re-tweeted: that of a broken bowl that had been fixed using gold, to signify that the cracks were not to be hidden but should be refined and celebrated as a treasured part of the history of the object.
The speakers at the Failure Panel (Martin French, Senior Library Assistant, SPRI; Claire Sewell, Research Skills Coordinator, Cambridge University Library; Marta Teperek, Research Data Facility Manager, Cambridge University Library) all emphasised that failure hurt but was a necessary part of any enterprise. Marta explained how scientific research works, how you set out to prove something and end up investigating something else. She said that the only failure in science should be a failure to use rigorous scientific methods, and that any rigorous investigation was useful because it explored fields that needed exploring, even if the results of the exploration were not as predicted. She also spoke about how those trained in scientific research, such as herself, often ended up choosing different career paths, and how this should not be perceived as a failure but rather as a development.
Other speakers spoke about repeatedly applying for jobs and being rejected. Indeed, a member of the audience pointed out that it was quite wrong to use the word 'rejected' or 'winners' since in the job application there were many applicants and the one who most suited the institution's need was selected, nobody was 'rejected' or 'lost'. However, people do get upset if they don't get a job they applied for, and Ange Fitzpatrick stressed the need to allow ourselves Netflix and Chocolate periods to get over the upset before we move on, learn from the process, and reapply elsewhere. Several of the panel had applied for many jobs before eventually progressing in their career.
Dr Emma Coonan, whose Twitter feed is, appropriately, @LibGoddess, gave her plenary talk in the afternoon on the same theme. Her talk was more of a sermon than a talk and inspired, I imagine, all who heard her as something that will affect them and be remembered for years to come. It it was a very good talk indeed, and quite spiritual. She explained how she had applied for a job and been asked to describe an event that she had organised recently and to explain what went wrong there. The question came at the end of a long interview and after explaining that she had put on a conference for libraraians from across the world, she said it had been organised so well by the team that nothing had gone wrong at all. This was the question on which she did not score highly, and consequently she had not been appointed to the post.
Thinking about the experience afterwards Emma had come to realise that this ability to analyse performance, reflect and adjust was a key management skill. She used the word 'iterate' a lot, which, I confess, I had to look up. It means, as I'm sure you knew, to repeat yourself. I think she said that in our experience we will face similar situations again and again and we need to ensure that we learn from the past so that we can change our behavior when we encounter similar situations in future.
Emma talked about a lot of things in that hour and a half. She was obviously very well read, and she quoted the idea that failure should be rewarded, (because at least the perpetrator was trying to do something new) success questioned and inactivity penalised, which made us laugh but you can see the impeccable logic behind it. She also talked about developing yourself: when she was young, she said, she knew it was important to be very flexible to an organisations needs, but now she was older and had developed certain skills she was proud of, she was more discerning about which organisations she thought she could work with to maximise the benefit of her input.
Emma also explained why she was fond of the platypus. She said that in her early career she was a cataloguer, and she loved cataloguing because it involved finding a neat scientific niche for each creature. She explained how scientists were happy that they could fit every creature into their neat Linnean world until they discovered the platypus, which, like a Mammal, had mammaries, but unlike any other mammal they lay eggs, thus defeating any neat classification. An entire new order of mammals, the monotreme order, had to be devised to accomodate their existance. I think the moral of this tale is that you need to adapt your internal mapping of the world when it is at odds with reality.
I liked Emma's tale of the platypus because I myself am very fond of the eohippus, an animal which has adapted itself into the horse and has in this way survived since the age of the dinosaurs, fifty million years ago. I expect humans must have had some sort of ancestor around at that time but nobody knows what it was or can recognise one as such until about six million years ago. So eohippus wins on the adaptability front. Should we be eohippuses, adapting to suit, or platypuses, unique and awkwardly insisting that scientists re-write all the science books to accomodate our astonishing existance? Probably a bit of each.
Comments