Moments By Charlie
Quote – “Fail Fast. Learn Fast. Improve Fast.” – Spotify Engineering Culture

Fail Fast. Learn Fast. Improve Fast.
I was watching a two-part YouTube video last week on the Spotify engineering culture. One of the things I scribbled down in my notebook whilst watching the video, that I thought would be valuable to share was this phrase of ‘Fail Fast – Learn Fast – Improve Fast’. It had such an empowering effect on me that I shared it the next day (on social media) after watching the video as the day’s motivational quote. But it is also something that I want to have as a permanent home here on the Moments by Charlie blog as a blog post.
Spotify Engineering Culture
The two-part YouTube video I watched was on the Spotify engineering culture. If you are familiar with software development, then the video will make sense to you. It was about how the team at Spotify weave aspects and concepts of Agile, Scrum, and Kanban, to create an engineering culture that works best for them and helps them achieve their goals and meet their deliverables. If software development is not your thing, then you may not understand the video at all, but you can still appreciate their philosophy of ‘Fail Fast – Learn Fast – Improve Fast’.
I think it’s such a great philosophy to adopt in business and in life, especially in you exist or meddle in things that have a rapid rate of change. This includes things that are inherent to you or your business, or things that are external, but yet impact the internal elements, and I suppose force your hand in needing to make a change. For example, if you are a small business just starting out and you are trying to establish a presence on social media. Although you may be internally trying to get your systems in place, pace things and maintain control within the business as you continue to grow and expand, you are still susceptible to and impacted by frequent and rapid change of social media platform features, algorithms, interfaces etc. and you are forced to keep up, learn it, adopt it, and try to utilise it.
Embracing the pace, rather than constantly putting up blocks in front of yourself, in fear of failure, will just have you going round and round in circles, without a net result forward. You have to try things (and sometimes fail) and just keep learning from them.
If you missed the quote, ‘Fail Fast – Learn Fast – Improve Fast’, when I first shared it on social media, and want to hear about these inspirational and motivational quotes I discover, as I discover them, then connect with us on social media. I like to share 3 to 4 quotes on social media a week. They serve to motivate me, and you, as we go through the weekly cycles of life.
Spotify’s Engineering Culture – YouTube Video
You know, that thing I’ve been talking about this whole blog post! Here’s the link to it, in case you missed the fact that it was embedded throughout the text. Again, keep in mind that if you’ve never done software development, and the words Agile, Scrum and Kanban, mean absolutely nothing to you, then I don’t think you will like the video, and perhaps it’s best to just stick to the quote.
- Spotify Engineering Culture – Part 1 (Agile, Scrum, and Kanban) | Spotify, YouTube Video
- Spotify Engineering Culture – Part 2 (Agile, Scrum, and Kanban) | Spotify, YouTube Video
- Spotify | Spotify Official Website (Australian Edition)