While walking in the mall, you saw a toddler struggling to walk properly. In your mind, you thought, “Isn’t she so cute… oh, come on. Walk steadily… Yes, that’s right.” You were anxiously waiting to see her make that few more baby steps.
The next few seconds, she fell and landed on her backside. She leaned forward with her hands on the ground, pushing her body upward to a balance position before she could stand properly again. That’s the spirit of the toddler – never give up. You go, “Well done baby girl!”
How often in the adult world when we failed in achieving something, or simply made mistakes, we lost that spirit which once infected us when we were young?
Most people are afraid to fail. They worry constantly about not meeting expectations, making a mistake, or trying something new. Because of this, many never get started on the path toward reaching their goals.. and thus assure themselves of the very thing they are afraid of.. failure. In order to become a successful entrepreneur you will likely have to ‘pay your dues.’ You’ll likely have to fail a few times, learn from your lessons, and only then be able to come through a winner. While you don’t have to take wild chances, you do have to take calculated and educated risks.
In the world of academics, mistakes are perceived as bad and to be avoided. For the first twenty-two years of your life, you are taught that mistakes are bad and embarrassing.. when in fact mistakes are simply opportunities to learn something new. The more mistakes a person makes, the more they will have learned and the greater chance they will have of succeeding on their next try. The key, however, is to learn from your mistakes and never make the same mistake twice.
Thomas Edison would have never invented the light bulb if he did not take this principle to heart. Edison failed more than 10,000 times before he found the filament that would create light for a sustained period of time. He did not view these as failures, however. On the 6,635th try to find a proper filament for the light bulb, Edison did not see himself has having failed 6634 times. He reframed the situation so that to him he had successfully eliminated 6,643 possibilities, refining and narrowing his search as he proceeded, drawing him closer and closer to his goal.
Two other failures you may have heard of are Levi Strauss and Christopher Columbus. Strauss headed for the gold mines of California in hopes of gold and glory. But he found none. Instead, this failure gave him new knowledge of a gap in the marketplace. He began selling pants out of canvas for the miners that were succeeding. Today, we’ve all heard of Levi Strauss jeans. Columbus failed miserably on his goal to find a route to India. However, in failing he ran into a new opportunity.. that of the new world. By taking action and learning from your mistakes and failures, you’ll gain new knowledge and become aware of many new opportunities. When you come to the edge of what you know, it’s time to make some mistakes.
If you have reached the edge of your career after a number of years and feeling enormously tired, it’s time that you make some mistakes. Try making some daring approaches to your work. If the only solution is for you to seek for another new job, do it. If being enterprising is what you desire, go for it. To put yourself in a dilemma situation will not help you move on. If you keep doing the same thing, you will get the same result. Anthony Robbins said that insanity is when you keep doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. An instant mistake that will reap new learning experience is certainly much better than years of clinging on to the same old mistake and doing nothing at all.
In Praise of Failure
As counter-intuitive as this sounds-given the massive failure of global financial institutions and the despicable revelations about executive payouts in companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG much can be learned from failure. In fact, our very reluctance to admit that something is NOT working is one of the reasons for our current protracted wars, severe financial meltdown, and no wide and deep commitment to develop alternative energy sources.
British author J.K.Rowling pushed the failure envelope in her 2008 speech to the graduating class of Harvard. She admitted that it was at the lowest point of her life (single parent, no job, one step away from being homeless) that she decided to stop pretending to be anyone else but herself and throw all her energies into writing. The Harry Potter series and a fortune of $1.1 billion testify to Rowling’s belief that “you will emerge wiser and stronger, secure in your ability to survive.”
ABANDON EGO but NEVER YOUR INTEGRITY
Integrity can be translated as faithfulness to one’s self and one’s ability whereas ego is viewed in terms of what others think. Some of the world’s most impressive successes started out as failures. Beethoven’s teacher told him he was hopeless as a composer and then, even as he became deaf, Beethoven wrote ravishing music. Churchill suffered numerous defeats in WWII and was kicked out of office. Yet, he is still regarded as England’s greatest wartime hero.
Michael Phelps astounded the Olympic swimming world, and yet his childhood was marked by failures to fit in. As Churchill stated, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” Or perhaps Henry Ford who went bankrupt many times before getting Ford Motor Company off the ground said it best. “Failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
DON’T HIDE FAILURE. FOCUS ON LEARNING
Throwing the same strategies and tools at a failure is destined to only get more of the same. The research conducted by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck confirms that when failure is viewed as a learning experience, people respond with greater effort. Those who believe they have only a finite talent for learning report that they stop trying and might even consider cheating to get ahead. In the business world, risk –and possible failure-is essential for success.
Companies like Apple and Xerox encourage effort and innovation and see failure as a steppingstone.
One of the bigger leadership mistakes would is to use social systems to bail people out of their failures rather than use systems to help people learn from such failures. No excuses. Just lessons learned and next steps to take.
THE OPPOSITE OF SUCCESS ISN’T FAILURE BUT MEDIOCRITY
Failed companies are rarely the fodder for case studies. That’s unfortunate because we have much to learn from the failure. In his book, The Strategy Paradox, Michael Raynor, a professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Canada, looks at the Sony flop of its Betamax video-cassette versus Matsushita’s VHS technology. Sony lost because it maintained an iron grip on licensing and high cost whereas Matsushita used opposite strategies. Although Sony lost, no one would regard Sony as a failed enterprise. WHY? Because Sony continued to take big risks and learn from them. The firm COULD have sunk into mediocrity.
LOOK BEYOND THE RESULT
In the world of science and technology, amazing innovations have come as a result of what might be termed “failure”. The ability to see beyond the obvious has given rise to everything from rubber tires and post-it notes to Viagra and wine-in-a-box. A great example is failuremag.com. This is an online breakup service founded by Ren and Deanna Thompson. The Thompson’s encountered so many online dating mis-matches that they started a Web-based “breakup service” that delivers bad news to the rejected party.
Faced with failure in many of our organizations and our national systems, we have two choices: hunker down, hide and live a mediocre life. Or-we can participate in our own leadership spheres of influence to learn from these failures and create something stronger, durable, and equitable for all.
