Business Insight Zone

The problem with a “try > fail or succeed” mindset is that it closes off learning possibilities. If you instead adopt a test-and-learn strategy (also called emergent strategy), you consciously design experiments you expect to learn from. Conscious design is critical because once the experiment has been run, the fact that you consciously designed it allows you to analyze the results and adjust accordingly. “Don’t do it this way again” is a very valid learning, especially if the experiment that resulted in that learning was designed so that negative fall-out was minimized.

Simply change its name in the taxonomy of the mind to “learning experience.”

The danger in promoting failure is one we see being played out in startups and in the social media arena where people say, “oh, failure is a part of business” but many people flying the Failure Flag are flops, fakes and poor business people that failed because of their inability to produce, execute or complete basic business tasks.

That said, you’re one of the more intelligent people I know and I highly value your position on failure and I know we agree that it is a natural part of any business cycle (note that I said business cycle, not pipe dream cycle), especially businesses harnessing creativity. Failure can be heartbreaking and discouraging, but as an entrepreneur, Churchill’s words echo in my head every day, “success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

Failure.

What everyone dreads. Well just those that don’t understand that failures are stepping stones to success.

Having studied many of the great successes of those before me, I have seen the obvious. They never gave up.

I can go off and write a book on all the previous amazing individuals who failed many times over in order to achieve something great.

For some reason, at this very moment, two inspirations who failed many times before reaching major accomplishment is Abe Lincoln and Thomas Edison.

Lincoln was born into poverty, lost eight elections, two failed businesses and topped it off with a nervous breakdown. We all know what he accomplished. Great read on his road to the White house, http://www.snopes.com/glurge/lincoln.asp

Edison failed at the creating incandescent light bulb 10,000 times. I remember in one of my fav books of all time, Think and Grow Rich, that when someone asked Thomas Edison how he felt about 10,000 failures and Edison responded that they were not failures but ways that did not work and that eventually he would come across one that would work.

Having gone through my own learning experiences and learning of others, I have come to the conclusion that we are all faced with failure and its up to us on how we handle it. Either we go down one road of letting that “failure” keep us down or help us grow.

This quote from Theodore Roosevelt has always lifted my spirits after a learning experience.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”

God speed.

What a great post! Working for a small start-up, we ponder failure all the time. I live by the idea that it’s often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I embrace experiments, and figure I’m learning something from every risk I take!