When a company achieves strong results, phrases like ‘we worked hard, we were able to improve, the strategy we implemented paid off’ come from the leadership. But, if results are weak, ‘consumer confidence is down, competition is fierce, the difficult economic situation’ phrases are frequented.
When things go wrong, we much rather (and more commonly) create excuses and lay blame than look at our own actions and shortcomings. There are many reasons for this but three quick examples may be that it is easier to accept a loss incurred when the cause for the loss is not our own, the cost of laying blame is preferable to feelings of personal inadequacy and, to protect ourselves against negative repercussions.
Distancing ourselves from failure may insulate us from adverse emotions and immediate exposure but often weakens our future ability and may cause us to avoid failure altogether. Avoiding failure is a losing game as the act itself supports the failure to change, and the future of a system without movement is an inevitable death.
In order to be strong in failure, understanding needs to be developed. In much of our experience, failure and mistake are used synonymously but this is not the case. One way to look at it could be that a mistake is a known failure repeated, such as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Mistake looks at the right and wrong of something whereas failure looks at the state of a situation which makes it a snapshot of a mid-process event. It may take many instances of varied failure to produce a successful outcome and many more to reach significant consistency.
Accepting failure as a part of an ongoing process allows room for learning, development and innovation to be built so that each occurrence helps the system become wiser, stronger and more creative; bringing success one step closer.
Understanding failure
The first thing to understand about failure is that it isn’t personal. Failing doesn’t make you a failure. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look at your techniques, skills, ideas and process, it means that these things aren’t you and are always in a constant state of change so, don’t identify with them, work at improving them.
The next is, do not ignore failure. To learn from it, one must investigate and understand it. Identify all of the inputs in and influences on the failed process. Do this well, and the value of information gathered far outweighs the cost of the failure and what this insight presents in the future, may prove invaluable in itself.
Having said not to ignore failure, the next step is not to attach to it. For the lessons learned to be useful, they need to be applied to a following attempt. Look deeply, let go and move on.
The last is related to the first, You are not defined by your failures but, accept that others are likely to define you by them. Approach their opinion like a failure on their part and do not identify with it but do not discount it as worthless either. The perspectives of others can be an excellent source of information, possibility and strength if you choose not to take them personally.
Our relationship with failure is a complicated one. The way we see it, feel it, stigmatise it and dodge it is influenced by many factors in our various cultures and education systems. The dropping of the negativity towards, the understanding of and the disconnection to failure opens enormous potential for failure to be transformative. So rather than try to pass the responsibility of failure onto others, own it, learn it and build upon it. And, if you are in a position to judge failure, reward the attempt, support the investigation and be a part of building something greater.
In hindsight, the end destination may be a success but the trail behind is always littered with failure.
Abitata 