The blog will pick a word of the week, to share & explore the selected word. Here’s an expression for the word – failure. Defined as a lack of success in doing or achieving something, especially in relation to a particular target or activity. Believe it or not, failure is an important part of life. In every process of reaching a goal, we will encounter challenges. Not all will lead to success, but when we accept failure as a part of the process, we feel inspired to stay positive & resilient. Failure can offer unique perspectives, feedback & insights that may not be apparent during success. It motivates us to question our assumptions, to explore alternative approaches, leading to more creative & innovative solutions. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end.
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing” – Henry Ford. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” – Thomas Edison. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts” – Winston Churchill. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve, the fear of failure” – Paulo Coelho. “When we give ourselves the permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves the permission to excel” – Eloise Ristad.
“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate” – Thomas Watson, former CEO of IBM. Sure, risking failure is important. Intelligent risks are essential for advancing through uncertainty, complexity & ambiguity. Intelligent risk is the pursuit of something new or innovative & there is no playbook for how to achieve the desired goal. Second, the outcome is worth the risk. Thirdly, it’s informed & we have assessed the risks.
But, even intelligent risk is not the full golden ticket to success & greatness. The other half of the ticket is learning the lessons that failure holds. Yet, learning from failure isn’t as easy as we would think. The biggest barrier to learning from failure is not its complexity, it could be us. Our reticence to look at failures honestly to identify the real causes. Then, we need to share & communicate all our learnings. Finally, try again! Failing to learn from failure is essentially failing twice. To move forward more intelligently, we need plenty of curiosity, self belief, self awareness, learning & development. Bill Marriott, Chairman of Marriott Hotels said, “you get confidence by doing, learning, making mistakes & fixing your mistakes.”
Failure can be confronting & chip at our sense of identity, makes us feel vulnerable. Though, in a world of rapid change, accelerating our learning rate from failure builds meaningful advantage & value. So, to enjoy more success & happiness, risk more failure but never let a failure go to waste.