We have the fuck-up riots which is festival of failures which is happening
in September 2017 and a gathering of fuckuppers so we can all meet each
other personally. So a lot of failure stories to come from there, and a lot of
things are gonna go wrong for sure!
Welcome to the Masks Off Podcast, Leadership Strategies No Disguises. I'm
Razwanna Wahid, and together with my co-host Olivier Larvor, we talk to
the smartest people in the world of leadership, change and psychology to give
leaders real strategies to bring human back to the workplace.
If you would like
to support our show please subscribe to our channel, like us or share this
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In this episode we talk
to Yannick Kwik, CEO of FuckUp Nights, talking about all things failure, when to
call it, how to celebrate it and the best way to learn from it.
YANNICK: FuckUp Night started in 2012 where the five co-founders, and I'm not one of the five
co-founders (I joined the team later on) , they were having some mezcal which
is a sort of a tequila Mexican drink, and they got drunk. They start to get
personal and they share their failure stories, their business failure stories
and besides being very good friends, they didn't know that
each of them had a failure story which was surprising. So they had a great
evening sharing all those crappy experiences between them. They had laughs
and tears, and they thought it was fantastic. They decided it would
be incredible to host an event where people could openly shared their business
and professional failure stories. So they met the day after (without being drunk) to
see if it was a good idea. They all agreed that indeed it was and they
decided to host the first FuckUp Night ever
in September 2012. They invited their friends, they selected three speakers
Obviously they were speakers as well. There were not a lot of brave speakers to be convinced
for the first ever chapter. They bought a couple of beers and it was the
first FuckUp Night on a very underground format. People loved it!
People asked to continue them. So they hosted one since
then every single month until now. I think we have hosted over 50 events
already for these almost five years. When they opened up the social media
platforms, the thing just bursted and all the city just wanted to replicate this
format. We sort of developed a franchise model where people could pay a
membership, and get the resources, use our brand, get our support and help
organizing Fuck Up Nights. The thing has gone wild and we're present in 230
cities, in 80 countries around the world. FuckUp Nights are hosted in 26
different languages and growing. now FuckUp Nights is just only one initiative of a
group where we also do research through the Failure Institute.
It's our research department. This is research based on data where we
identify trends and we try to predict failure depending on the country, on the
industry, on the gender etc... Then we have FuckUp Media. We're working on a
documentary, on a TV show and another different kind of media products. We
have the FuckUp Riots which is a festival of failures which is happening in
September 2017, and a gathering of fuckuppers, so we can all meet each other
personally. So a lot of failure stories to come from there and a lot of things
are gonna go wrong for sure!
RAZWANNA: what do you think it is about people gathering and finding
failures so attractive?
YANNICK: I think it is a taboo thing that is
sexy. I think there is a need on society. We've realized in countries
where people tend to be more straight, more perfect and more professional,
there's an increasing need of a space where people can freely talk about their
failures. I mean in those countries, FuckUp Nights are being more successful, let's say Mexico
for instance, let's say Germany etc... So I think it is just to get your tie off,
get your shoes off and and be yourself. OLIVIER: I notice that there's always alcohol
involved. When you said tequila first, and then, in the FuckUp nights you
will always have beers. So do you need actually something for people to relax?
It's almost to be vulnerable in front of others. You have to share and to
say:"Yeah, look, I've fucked up on this one". How difficult is
it for people to actually share their stories.
YANNICK: After a couple of beers, it's
easier to convince them to get on stage. Actually it's funny because we have
an organizers' manual you know, we call it the fuckuppers' manual, because we call
organizers "fuckuppers". We give them that manual with indications to follow, like a
mandatory point to bring beers on their events. Are you guys following me? OLIVIER: we are
but you're frozen on my screen, but I can hear you. YANNICK:
because you guys are frozen too. OK. OLIVIER: This is actually good because it shows
exactly what happens in real life. You know we are fucking it up! Let's continue. YANNIC: Fantastic!
OLIVIER: See how it goes, if we can
bring from this experience something good out of it!
so let's go!
YANNICK: Yeah, I got into the alcohol point. It's funny because we organize
FuckUP Nights in some Muslim countries and they are not sure about
organizing FuckUp Nights because they see alcohol consumption. We always let them
have tea or soft drinks. But basically, we want
people to feel a relaxed atmosphere when it comes to hear about failure
stories. And being true and being honest when it comes to talk about business
which there's a lack of honesty from my point of view when people talk
about their own businesses. How difficult it is to convince people to jump on
stage? It really depends on the person. What we always try to do is to let them
know that their failure story is going to be not only inspiring, but it's going to
help people take better or more informed decisions in business.
let me just move
because there's a little bit of sound here, sorry guys. RAZWANNA: Yannick, we had our own issues today to get connected.
I had to run around the building trying to find somewhere quiet here. So I think it is a running theme.
OLIVIER: this is what's happening you know, we are trying to build something and this is
day-to-day what actually businesses also experience. You want this to
be perfect, to run this and then this is what happens in reality. But at the same
time, in businesses, it's very hard to talk about
failures. So what is your point of view? Why do we have is this fear of sharing
our failures in companies?
YANNICK: well it's it's normal to have fear of failure
because failure sucks really. and people think we
love failing and it's not that we like failing, which we try as much as
possible to avoid failure because it's not good. It's a result of doing
something wrong, then you have to pay for it
but the bad thing is not analyzing those failures and not learning from them! Ao
if you don't build a space where people can talk about those failures without
being blamed for, we won't be able to learn from them, and that's has
repercussion for a company. Actually one of our most well fastest-growing revenue
streams is organising private events for corporations and big companies. So
we hosts and take the format of FuckUp Nights to an internal corporate event
and we get the CEOs or managers or employees to talk about their failures
on their day to a day, on their projects they're working on, on their previous
companies. It's very hard to get companies to accept this from management,
to accept their own failures. Especially if you have the CEO or a high executive
manager admitting they failed that X project in front of their companies. But
I've seen lately that there are a lot of companies figuring out that they have this need to accept failure in order to enable innovation,
and in order to enable a healthy culture in their company. So it's an increasing
thing, and it's great, because it's great for avoiding failures in the future.
It costs them less money because when you find out about a failure in the
early stage, it costs less than when people are quiet about that failure and
sometimes it's a bit too late to fix it. And also it's good for us because
there are more requests on those private events
RAZWANNA: Yannick, what are examples you can give us from those corporate events of
companies which had an evening talking about failures and then, the innovations
that they've gone on to create? YANNICK: it's quite difficult really to measure
the impact those events have on the companies, but through the Failure
Institute, our research arm, we've developed a tool where we send a specific survey
before the event and we send a specific survey after the event, and we can
measure changes on the culture of the company when it comes to accepting
failures. it has surprisingly worked a lot to
change that culture and to enable the mindset of innovation and freedom.
And also it helps minimizing the hierarchy of the company. For examples,
we've hosted plenty of private events for companies such as Google, IBM,
Microsoft, Coca-Cola...We hosted them for larger events like CEBIT in Germany,
we hosted them for nonprofit organizations etcetera. Sometimes,
depending on the objective of the company, we invite different kind of
speakers or we let them be the speakers if the message wants to be from top to
bottom of the company on management and on culture. We recommend them to have
at least two internal speakers if they want to have a message of
innovation, sometimes we invite speakers from the creative industries
that can join event, and sometimes they just want to have fun and we bring our
world best speakers and we make sure there are enough Beers. OLIVIER: Beers are important we get that. YANNICK: I have to say beers! I have to finish all my answers with beer.
OLIVIER : You are a CEO of your of this company, of this FuckUp Night company and I'm curious
, how do you apply this into your organization? How is
it different for you to manage these organizations? Do you talk openly about
failures? How it's different from a normal organization? YANNICK: it's completely
different from any other organization where I've worked before. Really, it's a
place where we talk face to face, where we talk from people to people, where we
there are no bosses in this organization. There are just people
that help make the most of the work of a team. It's a bit a cliche saying this but
it's true, it's crazy and we're finding that onboarding new employees is harder
on such a structure, because you no one is gonna be telling you off
for not doing something very specific or pushing you to get to that deadline.
Obviously we have control on all our processes, but everyone does their own
thing, on their own and a lot of people are not used to work on such an
environment. And another interesting thing is that we were all unified under the
headquarter team in Mexico, but now we have people in Mexico and in Spain we
have a person in Canada we have a person in Argentina. So it's quite
interesting how to build super engaging teams while having these
difficult geographically difficulties right. It's also different because
there's always a space to propose things to improve.It's a scheduled weekly
space where each person of the team has the lead on our weekly meetings, and they
propose how to be better at something operational and at something strategical.
So we try to get them to tell us how we could make their lives easier at work
and that covers operational issues and we fix them right away, and then we try
to get them to explain how they see the movement going, how they they dream
FuckUp Nights to be in the near future and how we could get closer to that
vision. So everyone is really shaping, everyone who is part of FuckUp Night is
really shaping the future of the movement, and not only in headquarters.
But also when it comes to our Fuckuppers, our local organizers, so that's
really a company that it's built together and not by a couple of
leaders...and beers! RAZWANNA: So I think a lot of businesses Yannick,
don't have the luxury of having that kind of structure, where they
started as they meant to go on, they started without a very open environment
they started with a very particular type of personality they wanted to recruit
and so they don't have the luxury I guess of having an open trusting environment.
But if a business, was a corporate business already established and the
leaders in that business who typically would be listening to this podcast, so if you
were to give them something practical to apply today on introducing this concept
of the FuckUp Night into their team, what would you advise that they do. YANNICK: What
I advise is always to give the example, so if you want to change the culture of your
company and it's never late to do that. You have to give the example and you
have to start by changing your habits and the way you communicate, and the way
you act. so starting by expecting failure publicly. It's great, I mean doesn't
necessarily need to be done at an organized Fuckup Night, it can be at a
weekly meeting, so you can just open ten minutes to share the weekly failures,
maybe the KPIs you didn't reach, the projects you have to kill this year in
order to keep the boat floating, starting from management to employees and get
employees comfortable where when it comes to talking about their screw ups. OLIVIER: I'm
curious about actually example that you may have had yourself. Or all of of your
companies have had. Maybe an example you can describe us and tell us
some lessons learned that you had or some things that make you act
differently after that. Would you have something which really meant
something to you? Like the one "fuck-up" which is important to you? YANNICK: a couple! a lot!
okay, I'll tell you two- okay one signing in f@@#$ contracts, if you don't sign a
contract, you very likely not going to get paid and that has happened to us! And
it happens to a lot of people and we listened so many failure stories about
people telling that they had to close their company because they didn't sign
up and we still didn't learn the lesson and
we didn't sign contracts and we didn't get paid! For number two,
images in Internet aren't free, and I used some image for a poster in November
2014 which was super cool, but the image owner was Getty Images and they found
out we used this poster globally, and they found out we used it in Vienna, in
Austria ,so they fined us! It costed us I think 1000 euros or 800
euros I think. They found again about us using this image in Australia so they
fined us again for 800 euros, and I just hope they're not starting with letter A
and there they keep going to the rest of the cities because, then we're really
screwed! but those fines seem to keep coming and it's like paying a monthly
salary to Getty Images...but the poster was pretty cool! it was like an empty
toilet paper roll! OLIVIER:I would have another question about your feeling about how
businesses are evolving I feel from my hand, that there's lots of
transformations, and not only about digital transformations. There's also a
different mindset coming inside organizations, You just mentioned that
some organisations are ready to have fuckUp Nights or meeting inside their own
companies, which for me is kind of WOW! That's big, that's huge! so how do
you see this trend going? Is it something that we'll see more and more
or is it just like something which is a small piece ? You know what what are your
thoughts about this future of organisations and companies? YANNICK: I think it's
a natural evolution, if they want to keep us innovative as in other companies, if
they want to have the best talent, if they want to craft the best ideas, then
they need to do something about it and sometimes it comes from not only
accepting failures, but being right, first thing. People don't believe bullshit
anymore or so they need to be true, right, honest and straight.
And I think it's just a matter of surviving.
There are definitely huge changes in companies that are tending to change
organization structure way more horizontal rather than vertical, that is
giving a lot of conflicts because you can't put rules in horizontal, on a
completely horizontal companies. But you have to give tips on ways to work and
and there are not many books that tell you how to manage these companies. And
it's a completely different way of doing business. So I think there's a lot to
improve on that side on how to manage teams without being a boss but helping
people make the most of their professional capabilities. So let's see
how it goes and I love the fact that this is happening already.
OLIVIER:we hope you
enjoyed this episode once again if you would like to support our show please
subscribe to our channel like us or Chevy citizen on your social media mercy
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