FAILING is an essential learning process in business and should be taught from school age, listeners to the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey heard.
Angela Prentner-Smith, founder and managing director of Glasgow-based digital training and strategy consultancy This is Milk, said she sometimes felt the education system should be “burned down” and started again.
The education system is about box ticking, she said.
“It’s about getting things right. When actually, as entrepreneurs, it’s about learning through failure. It’s about fail fast. Pick yourself up again. That didn’t work, let’s see what does work. But when you’re taught in a test environment, which is ‘pass this test,’ you’re not being tested on whether you’ve experimented – you’re being tested on whether you got the answers right.”
Ms Prentner-Smith said people should be taught this from primary one onwards – and particularly women.
“Women are taught to be perfectionists,” she said. “It’s this idea of, careful – don’t get that wrong. There’s a great YouTube video about that and about how women don’t go into coding, because coding is about experimentation.”
During the pandemic, Ms Prentner-Smith said she had transformed the business from three to 20 people, including contractors, had launched a new technology arm and had also had a baby.
“So we’ve gone from a small consultancy and training business to a large consultancy and training business with a technology arm and we’re working with the likes of the Scottish Government,” she explained.
Digital technology like mobile phones and voice assistants was changing everyone’s expectations and this meant businesses had to transform their people, culture and skills.
“We’re still fighting against the structures we’ve had since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Along with guests from the Scottish business community, The Go Radio Business Show features business advice and insight from Sir Tom and Lord Haughey at 10.30am on Sundays.
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