Friday Fails: Lee Kitchen Explores Failure in Business
Dusty Weis:
Greetings innovators, and welcome to Back of the Napkin, where we explore big journeys in the world of small business with the personalities who make it happen. And this is the first of what I expect to be many, many bite-sized segments that we have taken to calling our Friday fails. I'm Dusty Weis, along with Stephanie Davis. And Steph, what are we doing here with the Friday fails?
Stephanie Davis:
Well Dusty, here at SurePayroll, we believe failure is an important part of learning and growing. Therefore, we don't run and hide from failure, we fully embrace it. In fact, SurePayroll used to have an annual award for the best fail in the company. It's something that we've started to reimplement and celebrate on the marketing team, and it's why we wanted to have a Friday fail segment for the podcast.
Dusty Weis:
So while the fails may not be fun in the moment, they definitely leave a lasting impact. And of course, if you can learn from your mistakes, you can come out even stronger for having made them.
Stephanie Davis:
In episode one of Back of the Napkin, we chatted with Lee Kitchen, a brainstorming facilitator and consultant in Florida who helps huge companies flush out their creative ideas. He got his start at the Walt Disney Company.
Dusty Weis:
So we figured that Lee might be able to offer some excellent perspective on the subject of failure, and we were not disappointed.
Stephanie Davis:
You love failure. You want people to admit when they failed in the exercise and didn't follow the rules.
Lee Kitchen:
I mainly do that to call people out, to tell them that it's okay. We all have trouble breaking our own habits and we're own worst enemy when it comes to that. So calling people out in a session is a great way to just say, "Hey, we're okay with it. We know it's going to happen, so let's not pretend it's not going to happen, because we know what's going to happen." And over the course of three or four exercises, I find that it happens less and less. So they stop failing about the third exercise because they're like, "Oh, I get it now. I can say yes, and." We all have kind of a shell or a cover that we want people to see. And there was a time in my career where I realized that I can't be anyone but myself. And when I tried to be something different or what people wanted me to be, I failed at that really bad.
Lee Kitchen:
So I tried to be the brand manager that my boss wanted me to be, and my boss pulled me aside and was like, "Hey, what happened to Leebe? We want the fun, energetic, creative Leebe back. So I appreciate you're trying to be more businessy, but we don't want you to lose yourself." So it was a soul searching kind of thing. I just had to be myself and people just wanted me to be me. And that's how I was able to kind of be the best me possible. So in this business, I give them all of that plus another 50%.
Stephanie Davis:
Yes.
Lee Kitchen:
That's why I don't drink coffee, because this is just a way I am naturally, and this is kind of a gift, that not a whole lot of people have this much energy or have this positivity. So I feel like I'm not doing anybody right by not paying it forward.
Dusty Weis:
Lee, sort of drilling further down into this failure motif, in my experience working in the corporate world previously, I find that very often, organizationally, failure is stigmatized and almost penalized. And where people might have offered up a creative suggestion, they keep it to themselves out of fear. Is this a common problem, would you say, in the world of business?
Lee Kitchen:
Yep, it's definitely common, and it really has to do with good leadership. And I've seen it so often. And that's why I'm really lucky, because I partnered with one of Disney's best leaders. His name is Dan Cockerell, and listening to him talk about leadership and about setting the example and about admitting your failures is so inspiring, because I had so many leaders in my Disney career that they were also fronting and trying to cover up whatever they weren't good at. And the leaders that I really remember are the ones who were like, "All right you guys, we screwed this up. So let's have an idea session to feel how we can do better." There was no blame placed. It was just, "Hey, we're a team and we're rallying together." And I found that those leaders always got better results and better ideas.
Dusty Weis:
Well Lee, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. So why don't you tell us about a time in your career when you just absolutely fell on your face and failed?
Lee Kitchen:
The first one I thought of in this category was I was lucky enough to spend three months in Shanghai Disney, and it was a special event. And so we had three months to basically put together three days to launch the entire park. And of course in any event situation ... and Stephanie, you know this, it always seems like we never have the time, money, or resources to do it right. But at Disney, we get it done and you wouldn't have even know the difference in the background, because the Disney special event machine is a wonder of the world. And I remember that it was a three night event. The first night went off without a hitch. Beautiful. I was in charge of celebrities, believe it or not. And we had a beautiful celebrity red carpet. Everything was great. The next night we had set up for a big show in front of the castle and we had a rain plan and a regular plan, and we never rehearsed the rain plan, and what happened? It rained.
Dusty Weis:
Oh, no.
Lee Kitchen:
And everything in the background ... of course you wouldn't know on the outside, because it was perfect because we had pre-taped it, et cetera, but everything kind of failed in the background. And I remember I didn't get on the radio fast enough to tell people when all the celebrities exit, make sure you walk them with umbrellas to the next destination. Well, they didn't do that. They all walked backstage. And so here's 300 celebrities expecting ... and I was in charge of this ... expecting vans to come pick them up. Well there was no vans. So there's radio chatter.
Lee Kitchen:
And meanwhile, I know they're coming to Tomorrowland, and the place is a wreck in the back, so I'm picking up trash really fast in my suit and stuff like that. And I had one of the executives who got lost seven times jumped out, he recognized me and he gave me my what for. And I'd never been yelled at with so many expletives for a good 10 minutes with all my colleagues watching. So I took one for the team that night and I was like, "I have failed." But you know what? Again, no one would have noticed, because it was a perfect show when they had it on TV.
Dusty Weis:
Taking your lumps like you did, was there a valuable takeaway lesson that made you a better professional as a result?
Lee Kitchen:
Yeah, it really supported that teamwork, and you have to be transparent in communication specifically, and you have to share information. Especially when there's so much at stake, holding onto information and not sharing it with anybody could be really detrimental. And that was a case where we all needed to be as transparent as possible and we all needed to get something done and collaborate the best that we possibly can. So yeah, sharing information and being transparent.
Dusty Weis:
What about that executive that gave you what for? If you could go back and talk to that person now, what would you tell them about how that experience shaped you as a person?
Lee Kitchen:
What's funny is that I'm sure he was equally as frustrated that that stuff was happening, because he was an Asian counterpart of ours that worked in Asia. And so he was probably frustrated that the team at Disney weren't doing ... so I would basically go back and shake his hand and go, "Hey, no hard feelings. We were both frustrated and it was raining and it was not going the way it's supposed to go." So I would definitely high five him and say, "No hard feelings." And he would recognize me on the street there probably now because we had a lot of interactions.
Dusty Weis:
So it didn't damage the relationship going forward?
Lee Kitchen:
No, as a matter of fact, the next day I was responsible for seating executives for the opening ceremony and he tried to sit in the direct reports of Bob Iger. And I had to say, "Sorry man, you have to sit over here," and he was totally good with it. So my one job was to protect ... I had the board of directors spot, "Only board of directors can sit here. Sorry guys, keep moving."
Dusty Weis:
Well that's good that he didn't hold that against you, and it sounds like it was just a momentary venting of frustrations and not the sort of disproportionate penalization of failure that can really stunt an organization.
Lee Kitchen:
Yeah, and every time you fail, you definitely learn something each time. So I like to make a list of those things, because those are the big moments in life. When you have a big failure like that, it's the only way that you truly grow. No use dwelling on stuff that we can't change. Let's just think about how we're going to make it better next time, and all agree that we're going to try our best to avoid that. And of course there'll probably be something we don't think of and we're going to fail again, and we'll just learn from that and keep going. It's the best way to learn. It really is.
Dusty Weis:
I mean, that's taken straight from Jedi master Yoda, who very famously said, "The best teacher, failure is."
Lee Kitchen:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that Yoda reference.
Stephanie Davis:
Failure's hard enough, but when it's in a public setting like Lee's, it's really hard to handle, but he pivoted well and embraced the moment.
Dusty Weis:
I've always said taking a tongue lashing isn't the hardest thing about messing up, it's holding your own tongue long enough to get your temper under control so that you can save some face. That's the tricky part. And Lee offered a masterclass in this instance. If you want to hear Lee's full episode, check it out in the podcast feed and be sure to check in with us again soon. We're going to have more full episodes and more Friday fails coming out on a regular basis.
Stephanie Davis:
So please make sure that you're subscribed in your favorite podcast app. And if you enjoyed the show, leave us a five-star rating or even a review. We would love to hear from you about any ideas that you have for small business owners who we should be featuring on this show.
Dusty Weis:
Back of the Napkin is brought to you by SurePayroll, where small business is their business. From easy online payroll to 401k support and award-winning customer service, SurePayroll has been serving the payroll and business needs of small businesses for more than 20 years. Learn more at surepayroll.com and get two months free as a new customer.
Stephanie Davis:
Here on Back of the Napkin, our executive producer is my boss, SurePayroll's Carrie Straights. Show producers are Kevin Aubrey, Ashley Peterson, and Dave Papa, and our production partners are Podcant Media.
Dusty Weis:
Where we provide branded podcast production services for businesses, our editor and producer is Larry Kilgore the third. So thanks for tuning into Back of the Napkin. I'm Dusty Weis.
Stephanie Davis:
And I'm Stephanie Davis.
