“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”
James B. Conant
Former President of Harvard University
I don’t know of anyone who isn’t afraid of failure at some level. That fear can span a wide variety of things, ranging from trying a new recipe at home, speaking before an audience in public or perhaps proposing a new idea, product or process at work.
We often think we’re the only ones afraid of making a mistake and failing at something, but I think it’s far more prevalent than that. Observers of our society would point to an inherent bias towards talking about our successes rather than failures. When we think of failure we often think that it links to some form of incompetence. Whatever we tried didn’t work because we did something wrong. But I don’t think that’s as much the case these days as it might have been historically. In our modern world the speed, scale and interconnectivity of change is so dramatic and so pervasive that it likely often exceeds our ability (individually or collectively) to absorb and process all the changes that are happening. Failure in today’s world is often far more a result of uncertainty and complexity rather than just downright incompetence.
When we look at failure through a different “lens” we see that our fears are often the one thing holding us back from taking that step forward. We need to look at the failures we encounter with an optimistic bent – every mistake is an opportunity to learn; and often it’s something important. We can use our experience in failing to make different (hopefully better) choices in the future. Henry Ford, no stranger to mistakes, noted that failure provided the opportunity to begin something again, this time with more intelligence. Thomas Edison, who held over 1,000 US patents is said to have tried over 10,000 different combinations of materials before he found the right ones to function as an electric light; he clearly failed a lot more than once.
Take that attitude of “intelligent failure” into your workplace. If you’re leading a group, a department or even an entire organization you need to exemplify the culture you’re seeking; that mistakes are an opportunity to learn something important and that failure is crucial to the learning process. An organizational culture focused on success requires an allowance for the lack of success. And an organization that’s not focused on the success of its employees, products and customers won’t be around in the long run.
By Harold Hay, Financial Management
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