17 Learning and failing fruitfully

A positive mindset is important in any public interest communication campaign or intervention.

But it is also worth thinking about what to do when things don’t work out the way you want. Especially for low income communicators, it may be necessary to know when to pull the plug, and divert resources elsewhere. You may also have captured insights and information that you don’t want to waste—so how do you save them for a future intervention, and/or share them with other stakeholders who could make use of them?

This can be particularly important when we are thinking about larger structural and systemic changes. A well-resourced organisation might regularly ask, ‘What have we learned, so we can do better next time?’ A constrained organisation might ask those questions, or they may not have the luxury of trying again.

Here is an extra Wrapping-Up activity you can try when things have not gone the way you would have liked.

Extra activity: Create a safe space where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts, and/or allow anonymous feedback. Focus on extracting key learnings from both failures and successes by asking:

• ‘What can be learned from this?’
• ‘Even if we didn’t achieve our goal, can we identify ways in which we contributed to our outcomes?’
• ‘Who needs to know this?’
• ‘How can we create lines of solidarity, support, and collaboration, both internally and externally?’

Conduct a basic stakeholder mapping exercise: ask who are the main audiences you have been trying to influence, who is impacted by the success or failure of your messaging, and who could impact the success or failure of your messaging. Make a list of broad categories of stakeholder. From these categories, take special care to identify fellow travellers, other organisations or groups who might be facing similar challenges, or interested in similar goals and outcomes.

Explore opportunities for mentorship, collaboration, and the sharing of best practice by asking:

• ‘Have you encountered similar issues?’
• ‘How have you addressed them?’
• ‘What have you learned?’
• ‘Can we work together?’
• ‘Who else shall we contact?’

You can also engage stakeholders by sharing your findings and asking for their feedback. Ask questions like:

• ‘What did you observe?’
• ‘What insights can you add?’
• ‘What do you think these results tell us about what we might do in future?’
• ‘How can we collaborate to boost our impact?’