The Beautiful Journey of Failure
David Freund, Chief Leadership Officer
This past week, on a drive from Utica to Syracuse, I listened to the Corporate Competitor Podcast, and the host, Don Yeager was interviewing Uri Levine, the founder of WAZE. During the podcast, Uri mentioned that creating a start-up is a “journey of failures.” As I drove, my mind kept returning to that statement. I think most people would consider a journey of failures to be a very pitiful life, and yet, all I could think was, “a beautiful journey of failures.”
Michael Jordon is perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time and yet Michael missed 12,345 shots and made 12,192; 28 of which were game-winning shots. Michael missed more shots than he made and is still the best player who ever played the game. In an interview, Michael stated, “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 again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Even Michael Jordan views failure as a key to success.
Success is a journey, not a destination. If we want to live a life of success, we need to view failure as a key part of our life, and to do this, we need to change our view of failure. When I interview someone on The Navigating Leadership Podcast, I always ask how failure has shaped their life. This week, I interviewed my son Jeremy, who is coordinating Crouse Hospital’s Leadership Institute, and he commented that you always learn more from failure than you do from success. Ryan Leak, author of Chasing Failure, writes, “When we chase failure with the goal of growing and striving to make our wildest dreams even an inkling more of a reality, then we’re living a life that is not only successful but inspirational.” Failure has the potential to bring us knowledge, growth, and success and can be inspirational to others. Now, that sounds like a wonderful life journey.
Leadership is filled with risks. There are risks to acting but even greater risks to not acting. Our goal should be to fail quickly when the costs are lowest. Reflect on the failure, adjust your approach, and reenter the process. Ryan Leak also shares that failure loses its punch in community. The best leaders establish a failure-friendly environment. A failure-friendly environment isn’t one with careless actions abound but rather an environment where failures are seen as opportunities to begin again more intelligently.
Thomas Watson, former CEO of IBM, said, “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” This all sounds well and good, but how do we do this? How do we change our mindset and turn failures into success? When Thomas Edison approached his failures, he said, “I’ve not failed 10,000 times. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” Our failures are only negative if we stay in them. Like Edison, we must realize that we learn something from failure. Edison also realized each of his “failures” got him closer to success, and at some point, he learned enough lessons for his invention to work.
My greatest life lessons have also come from my failures. They have shaped who I am and created a personal value that I can now share with others. During my interview with Jeremy, he shared that his failures resulted in his growth and that growth brings joy. Did you catch the process Jeremy identified: failure, growth and then joy? The journey of failure can truly be beautiful. It’s all up to you. If you’re interested in learning more about leadership, you can listen to my podcast, The Navigating Leadership Podcast. New episodes come out twice a month.