If there's one word that has always accompanied me in my professional trajectory, as a founder, manager, entrepreneur and mother, it's mistake. For a long time, mistakes carried a weight that seemed paralyzing: a feeling of incapacity, of shame. But over the years, I came to understand that failing is part of building new things.
When I founded my first companies, each stage was marked by small mistakes: a campaign that didn't perform, a hire that didn't work out, a product that didn't find its audience. And I blamed myself a lot. Until I realized that, deep down, all these failures contained valuable clues to start over better.
I often say that my experience as a mother was a living laboratory for developing this mindset. Raising Clara, I realized there are no infallible manuals. It's trial, error and constant adjustment.
In the world of startups and early-stage businesses, the fail fast, learn fast culture has gained prominence in recent years. But in practice, I see many people confusing this philosophy with the idea of failing in a disorganized way.
The Post-Mortem framework, which comes from technology, can be adapted to any business context.
Another powerful tool is Test Cards: a simple record of hypotheses to be tested and recurring updates of results, including failures and their learnings.
There's no failure analysis that works without emotional intelligence. Talking about mistakes touches the ego, insecurities, fears.
The secret is not treating failures as isolated events, but as information systems that feed back into progress.
Today, I think of mistakes as allies. They helped me develop resilience, sharpen my critical thinking and understand the importance of setting real priorities.
My message to whoever is reading this: document your failures, share with the team, discuss, learn, and transform those moments into fuel for growth.
Failing hurts, but standing still hurts even more. May we have the courage to move, learn and innovate, with method, emotional intelligence and generosity towards ourselves.