OPINION
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The word ‘failure’ has acquired negative connotations. Its origins are more neutral as in ‘non-occurrence’, something that was planned for, but didn’t happen. This happens with many words and their intonations, the contexts in which they are used. Email is a trap, because words in that context carry no intonation or qualification, and because they are, in a sense, printed, they may acquire a weight and a toxicity which might not be what the sender intended. Conversely we use some very serious words in jest: ‘bastard’, ‘tart’, ‘old bugger’. But today, I want to examine failure in its objective, and I hope, positive, sense.
I start from the assumption for failure to occur, something has to be attempted, some endeavour initiated. Leadership, planning, the setting of objectives, goals, bring with them the possibility of failure. At a personal level, I ‘fail’ several times a day, and each time it happens, I learn something. One of my tools as a flying instructor was to emphasise the power of the negative example, to allow pupils to make mistakes with due regard for their safety [and mine!], to recognise the cause and nature of the error and to learn from it. In some cultures, the fear of failure paralyses initiative, and suffocates innovation. I would like to propose that we recognise the opportunities that failure offers, and the process of moving on.
Once we took our society for granted, if we looked at it at all. Nowadays managerialism contaminates all our processes: my house insurance is due for renewal, and I thought I would offer the business to a local company, but its processes were so layered and so proofed against failure and the possibility of litigation as to render the process incapable of navigation, and I gave up. A friend wanted to move a queen-size bed and a marble-topped washstand from A to B, a distance of less than 30 kilometres, and was asked to provide photographs of the objects and the egress and ingress access, ie any steps, of the respective houses. AWK!
Today, to ‘fail’ has acquired a stigma, especially in leadership. We are taught to avoid it at any cost, play it safe, and aim for perfection, that enemy of the good. But what if we came to accept it as a corollary of the eventual road to success? What if we turned our process on its head, and as Mark Zuckerberg said, “moved fast and broke things”? The concept of ‘failing fast’ is simple yet powerful: test ideas quickly, learn from the results, and adapt before you’ve invested too much time, energy, or resources. It’s not about recklessness; it’s about intentionality. And it is an effective strategy for resilience and growth.
To me, this is not just a concept, it’s part of my way of life. I brought up seven children on this principle, touching a stove too hot, mounting a mare too skittish, reefing early. My writing is a constant process of write, read, accept or reject. I grew up on the basis that life was a ladder which you had to climb: as the years roll by I am much more focussed on satisfaction rather than success. And I have had many fails along the way.
I have enjoyed a rich and varied life, with many shifts and evolutions, often stepping into unknown contexts. I navigated by testing ideas, and consciously learning on the way. I failed many times, but each brought an expanded awareness, the way to refine process and move forward. Vey few of us work alone as a solitary genius. We mostly have to work with others, and sometimes, to lead them.
I learned to set the vision, and to share it with others: we would start by acknowledging what it was we were trying to achieve, with what assumptions, and the ways in which we might know if we were succeeding. This process allowed us to see, if the initiative didn’t go as planned, where we were coming from, and where we might go next. This allowed us to transform failure into useful data and invaluable feedback. A lesson I learned early was that you cannot lead in isolation. You have to take your team with you.
Start small. Failure can be beautiful.
John Fleming II
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