Failure is essential to success. Without failing, big breakthroughs or new innovations do not happen
Failure is bad and we have been taught to distance ourselves from failure.
Failure is bad and we have been taught to distance ourselves from failure.
Yet, if you look back at history, great breakthroughs are dependent on failures. In fact, great achievers are born out of failures. Michael Jordan, The Beatles, Walt Disney, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison all had one big thing in common – they were major failures before success came to them.
Michael Jordan, probably the greatest basketball player in history, almost quit the game in high school when he was dropped from the senior team.
He described that day as the worst day of his life. Yet, it marked an important day in Jordan’s life as he decided (after a lot of tears and crying) that he would learn from his failure and make the team the following year.
The Beatles were turned down by Decca Records and were told “We don’t like your sound, and ‘guitar music’ is on the way out”. Capitol Records also rejected them a few years later. Instead of giving up and feeling dejected, they kept going and eventually went on to sell millions of records.
Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper early on in his career because he lacked imagination and was not creative. Yet he turned that failure to build one of the most creative companies in the world – Disney.
In school, his teacher told Thomas Edison that he was too stupid to learn anything. Yet, he became one of the greatest inventors of all time and the founder of General Electric (GE).
The very first time Edison was working on his light bulb experiment and failed, he made notes of his failure. He then made adjustments and tried again and again and again. It took him about 10,000 experiments to invent the perfect set-up for the electric light bulb. To quote him, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
All these stories on failure make one simple point – failure is essential to success. Without failing, big breakthroughs or new innovations do not happen.
Learning from failure is what makes great leaders who they are. Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, once declared: “That’s where success lies – on the far side of failure.”
So, if failure is so pertinent to success, why do we not embrace it? In fact, why don’t we build failure into our organisations, our leadership development programmes and even our product development processes?
My brother’s story illustrates why companies should build failure into the development of their employees.When he was young, he found the cocoon of a butterfly. He took it home and a few days later, a small opening appeared. He was thrilled and sat watching the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. After awhile, he noticed that the butterfly stopped making any progress and it appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and could go no farther.
My brother decided to help the butterfly with a pair of scissors by snipping off the remaining bit of the cocoon. And with his help, the butterfly then emerged.
But the story does not have a happily-butterfly-after ending. The butterfly that emerged had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. My brother continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that at any moment, it would expand its wings and fly off. But that never happened.
In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It never was able to fly.
My brother had not understood then that the restricting cocoon and the struggle to go through a small opening was God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings to prepare it for flight.
Personally, I believe that if someone wanted to succeed quickly, he or she needs to experience as many failures as possible in the shortest possible time.
So, if you are a leader reading this, let your employees fail. In fact, create opportunities for your employees to learn through their failures.
But don’t just stop there. Share stories of your mistakes and failures with your employees. And then watch them grow and develop into majestic butterflies. Go on, let your people fail!
(adapted: thestarbiz, January 10,2009)
