Do You Manage Failure?

— 8 Ways to (Not) Overcome Your Setbacks

‘How do you create good results? Make good decisions. How do you make good decisions? Get experience. How do you get experience? Make bad decisions.’ *

Innovation is often defined as value created through executed new ideas. Anything ‘new’ includes learning and sometimes unexpected outcomes, or what some might call ‘failure.’ In a constantly and rapidly changing world with increased demand to take on risk, how do you manage failure? And how should you not?

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” — Henry Ford

My top 8 tips on how to not manage failure:

1. Don’t wait until Monday to get back on track — You committed to a daily run for the week, and when Wednesday arrives, something pops up so you skip the run. That leaves the whole week ruined and you feel you ‘have to’ wait until Monday to start, again. Ever thought that way? Me too. Guess what? Any hour of any day is perfectly suitable to resume your commitment.
2. Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t achieve your desired outcome — ‘I should have known.’… ‘Now they think I can’t do it.’ … ‘Why didn’t I change that sooner?’ To ruminate on the negative doesn’t make anyone happy and it isn’t constructive. Take a deep breath, reflect on what you’ve learned, do better next time and move on.
3. Don’t make excuses — You blame external circumstances because you haven’t experienced what you’ve dreamed of, and now you’re, ‘too late,’ ‘too old,’ ‘too young,’ ‘too inexperienced,’ ‘too…’ fill in the blank. If you want something you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse. What is the smallest step you can take today to make progress in the direction you want to go?
4. Don’t procrastinate facing the consequence — The purpose of the common startup and innovation mantra to #failfast is to allow small setbacks to gain knowledge and reduce risk. When you feel you’re going the wrong way, ask for help, apologize, compensate, check-in.
5. Don’t punish yourself by increasing an activity — ‘I didn’t contact 10 customers today but I’ll call 20 tomorrow’ — Most likely you’ll end up not doing anything because the activity becomes too demanding. Continue to make progress according to plan. Consistency wins over intensity in the long run.
6. Don’t ignore the required trade-offs for success — Feeling inadequate because everyone seems to be doing so much better? You can have anything but you cannot have everything. Everyone’s day has 24 hours, what will you spend those hours on? Make sure you make that choice or someone else will make it for you.
7. Don’t avoid doing what you desire because you’re afraid of failure — If you’re never afraid, you’re probably not leaving your comfort zone enough. Growth is uncomfortable. Recognizing your fears is the first step to reducing them. I recommend Tim Ferris’ Fear-Setting exercise. In the end, the people that will have opinions about you will have them whether you do something or not — you might as well have fun along the way.
8. Okay, so you messed up — Now, how do you repair the mistake and what do you learn from it? — Sometimes a customer complaint gives you an opportunity to create the strongest brand advocate, a harsh truth evolves into an authentic family discussion, or a work mistake makes you realize you’re in the wrong job. Do your best to make up for the mistake and learn the things you need to do even better next time.

Fail fast, fail forward, fail often, fail better — All common innovation statements. We live in constant unpredictable change that is becoming the norm with increasingly higher stakes. Meanwhile, even though we cannot always succeed in a constantly new environment, there’s stigma around failure from both others and even ourselves. Learning to manage set-backs, ambiguity and uncertainty not only makes you more competitive in your career, it makes you happier in life. Ultimately, everything that happened in your life, whether you label it negative or positive (or neither), made you who you are today. You have the choice to make decisions that will take you to where you want to go in the future. If you want a different future — make different decisions.

Now, I’m curious about you, how do you manage, or not manage, failure?

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” — Michael Jordan

(* The introduction statement is inspired by someone else’s words, though I cannot find the original source.)