Embracing Failure v. Rejecting Defeat

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Comment by Thomas Meylan, PhD on April 5, 2009 at 11:30am

Hello all,

Facing Challenges Whether You Chose Them or Not is now live on Amazon.com. The Kindle edition has been uploaded, but not yet available as of this writing. This book provides a process that facilitates "the embracing of failure and rejecting of defeat."

It was written at the suggestion of, and with great support from, Jim Burke, a futurist at Northrop Grumman. It is our intention that this book gets into the hands of the many people facing personal challenges because of the current economic downturn. It is also our hope that people who need to build a personal process for their own success will make use of this book's ideas to do so.

This book can be significant for entrepreneurs taking their first swings at starting new ventures. It will also be significant for those who coach and mentor first-time entrepreneurs. It takes a good process to build personal habits of success, and this book provides a great process template.

Please support this book's success in any way you can. Buy it. Blog with me about it at www.facingchallenges.org. If you can post a five-star review for it on Amazon.com, please do so. Tell me about people in need of these ideas. Or about companies, or unions, or special interest groups. There are great discounts available for large bulk purchases.

I already have three real-life stories about how this book is helping people, and Facing Challenges has only been available for four days. Please help keep the momentum going, especially for those really facing challenges.

Many Thanks,

Thomas Meylan, Ph.D.
tmeylan@evolvingsuccess.com

Comment by Thomas Meylan, PhD on March 4, 2009 at 7:45am

I've put a strategy together to help people figure out how failure creates the routes to achieving a goal or objective. One of the catch phrases in it is "run the experiment." You define a goal, such as "I'm going to create the first practical electric lamp." Then you run as many experiments (most of them likely to be failures) as it takes to achieve the goal. In Edison's case, that was a couple thousand failed experiments, which he embraced, to achieve one goal for which he always rejected defeat.

So when I talk about running the experiment, remember how science uses experiments: experiments are science's test and verification activities. A scientist always learns something from an experiment, and few scientists actually talk about failures anymore when assessing the results. If the experiment "worked," then you know you've predicted something about your field of interest. If the experiment "failed," then you're probably of the verge of an important discovery, assuming you set your experiment up correctly. In either case, your efforts are moving forward toward the realization of your goal.

These ideas and more will be coming out in my new book "Facing Challenges Whether You Chose Them or Not" in a couple weeks. It's a short handbook on personal success for people facing tough times. However, it's a general enough look at building your own success that most ambitious folks can pick up a few helpful ideas from it as well. I'll ping the IASE when it comes out.

All the best...

Comment by Gregory Emsellem on March 1, 2009 at 11:49pm

Wow dave

I don't know what is the business you are running but I m very impressed by your way to describe the whole experience... I have never read something so acurate and funny!
You do sum it very well, It is exactly what it feels like : "never stop swiming" and I'd just add that sometime it is a long long dive between being able to breathe....

I was too in a highly protected academic job before... and far from having a clear picture of what i was doing when i quited and decide to go down the entrepreneur way....
I definitely see that there would be a lot of work, but this way perpetual, night/day, week/weekend efforts was beyond everything I could imagine

but it is worth every effort when you see the results and have some sense of success

good luck to you

Comment by Dave Hook on March 1, 2009 at 11:23pm

When preparing for becoming an entrepreneur, many told me that at some point I'd just have to jump in...take the plunge. What they didn't say was that getting a business off the ground--especially a business that seeks to develop a completely new niche--is sort of like drowning. You can live in fear of business demise, or you can be grateful for every gulp of air and income. It's a choice.

Each day I wake up grateful for the opportunity to take my company just a bit farther. Weekdays and weekends blur in a way that never existed when the government paycheck seemed like a right of existence, not necessarily the result of tangible efforts and return on investment. It is a different world in which the entrepreneur swims. Sometimes you see the sharks. Sometimes you brush the coral. But sometimes your feet touch the bottom while your head is still above water. And that is the feeling that makes the effort worthwhile. But you never, ever, stop swimming.

Just a little space entrepreneurial zen...for what it's worth.

Comment by Diane Kulisek on March 1, 2009 at 4:12pm

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to let us experience surprise. Were we omniscient, would we bother to attempt the impossible? Yet, without the human unreasonability of determined effort, perhaps even our gods would not know all of what is possible.

When I was born to poverty and low social status, I was not impressed by what was possible. I could see what was possible all around me. It was the impossible that whispered to my core in my dreams. I wanted to be surprised with those possibilities manifest and, more importantly, I wanted to surprise myself. My model for what mattered was only reinforced when I realized that surprising others seemed the greatest gift I could give them, as well.

When I would hear that something I considered worthwhile was known to be impossible, I accepted that as a personal challenge to issue forth with a surprise. If I failed, as I often did... and continue to do... I discovered a nifty little miracle. I got angry. It wasn't just a stomp-my-foot-and-punch-the-air-with-my-fist-and-a-curse kind of angry. I got angry with the self-determination to use it as a weapon against my inner and outer obstacles. Perhaps I was just born with a warrior spirit but, dammit, as the universe was my unholy witness, I was going to win!

My quality assurance vocation means doing everything within my power to help things be as much of what they are supposed to be as possible. Perhaps you think that sounds trivial, but quality is an incredibly elusive target because expectations about what things are supposed to be constantly change in the eyes of the beholders, including my own. Yet, there is something divinely noble about the quest to assure that something is as much of what it is supposed to be as is humanly possible. Perhaps our gods know how much quality is enough. I don't. I am constantly surprised by how much better, how much more reliable, how much more dazzling, how much more fulfilling, how much more beautiful, how much stronger, how much more elegant, how much more filled with integrity, how much more quality... something or somebody can embody. The so-called failures along the way are just reminders of how noble the best surprise of all will be when it is attained... the surprise of optimal quality... the corner turned whereby our gods have collaborated to delight us with the surprise of something better than the universe has ever before revealed to mankind.

The anger that decimates our obstacles as we slash away at them like our proverbial arch foe, the ever present threat of self-defeat, is the magic that takes us from one reality to another. In my short life as a human being, I will always appreciate the surprises... good and bad. Without surprises there would be no dreams of what could be. There would be no magic. There are no unbearable failures if one realizes that they constitute the only means by which the omniscient can provide the contrasting gift of surprising success.

I know this probably sounds fanatically preachy but, dammit, it is what is in my soul. I thank you for this forum within which to reaffirm it for myself and share it with those who might find it resonates within theirs, as well.

Comment by D Alan Eastwood on March 1, 2009 at 3:33pm

Guillermo,

Your topic is timely and provocative. In watching the video above next to a video of vast acres of brand-new unsold cars, it makes one think about how prices got so high compared to what buyers are willing, or able, to spend.

I’m not from the hand-grenade school of success, maybe because, as a boy, I learned to be an excellent marksman with a single-shot rifle, using the heads of roofing nails as my bull’s-eyes. Tesla, who preferred to do field tests in his mental workshop, is one of my role models. I’m from the waste-not school that sees performance pressure in a positive way, and if I were hiring someone to design a bomb or a space-plane, I would be looking for that one-shot disaster-averse mindset. Yet, recognizing the occasional value of hand-grenades and the impossibility of constant perfection, for worst-case scenarios my father used to say: “If you can’t win, don’t lose”—meaning: adjust the game if you have to, but not the ultimate goal (such as affordable automobiles and safe spacecraft). So, I’ll come at this topic of success versus the f-word from another angle…

Da Vinci’s painting, “Mona Lisa,” originally depicted a feminine figure seated between two pillars. It upset me, at first, to learn that the pillars were removed after Leonardo’s death. I believe this was done at the direction of the French king who owned it in order to protect the work from those who would have burned it if they were to realize that it embodied “occult” information embraced by the Knights Templar and sympathetic esotericists (see my website: www.MonaLisaNews.com).

The symbolism of the pillars, which can be stated simply as “polarity,” can also be represented by the polar opposites: Success and Failure. So I find it ironic that the pillars were discarded because, in protecting the painting from destruction, the emphasis of the image became, inadvertently, even more concentrated on the enigmatic figure central to Leonardo’s message. And, in my opinion, that is exactly where, as entrepreneurs, the focus of our consciousness belongs: at the center of our selves, our constituencies, our purpose, our vision, our destiny, our power, and our process as we move ahead toward each next milestone.

When we are enthused, turned-on, like the filament at the center of a light-bulb, we give no thought to success or failure; we are in the midst of our flow and the feeling is like making love. In my opinion, the question for every entrepreneur contemplating the riskiness of their grail quest is: Is your whole being magnetized by the desire for the grail that awaits you at the end of the journey? If so, ignore the damned pillars and keep moving forward. If not, maybe it’s not the right grail for you. By the way, one of the services my consulting business offers is a “Direction Assessment.”

--Alan E.

Comment by Gregory Emsellem on March 1, 2009 at 6:48am

funny I was looking at the same honda ad a few hours ago, thinking it was so true...

it also remind me a very good talk about how important it is to be allowed to fail when developing new idea by the very bright Debra LePore of AirLaunch at a CSA conference a few years ago

Indeed, even though it is very hard for people with finance background being allowed to fail (technically) is the only way radically new technology can emerge in a company... hence failure does pave the way to technical, commercial and financial success!

However my feeling toward company failure is slightly more nuanced.
If everyone, engineers, managers and financial backers are doing their work properly then the technical failure which are necessary to actually develop innovative products and service should not jeopardize the company...
it takes a lot of efforts on all side to set realistic expectation and whole lot of courage and patience but a good exemple to my mind can be find in SpaceX

indeed the company has learned tremendously from the first flight tests which were failures. However the company has survived to benefit from it, which involve both a good planning from the management and a strong resilience from the investors...
the last being unfortunately something in an awfully short supply at least since 2001!

Comment by W. Edward Griffith, Director on March 1, 2009 at 12:41am

Mr. Sohnlein,

In a variety of my own IASE blog posts, I too have addressed the issues of success and failure, which is why I appreciate your post so much.

With regard to knowing when to call it quits and when to keep going, I believe (for myself anyway) that there is an instinctive element that the entrepreneur must be in touch with as the compass by which he or she find the direction in such a decision.

Pressures abound while the weight of one's dreams and the faith of others are active and integral ingredients in the venture one leads. While it is not an easy journey, indeed, it is worth the pressures, worries, decision making and stress when it is something you believe in. Even so, believing in what you're doing is not the answer in itself. One must find the way to articulate it to others as well.

In my own efforts, my wife and I and our small, but capable team, are devoted to the vision and the goals we have set forth for our ventures. We find ourselves learning from past mistakes, making better decisions the next time around and always recognizing that while the threat of failure is an ever present possibility, it is not to be feared, but rather respected. As you so eloquently pointed out, it is quite possible to embrace failure while rejecting defeat.

You are correct when you say obstacles and countless detractors are ever present. It would be easy to fall into the clutch of discouragement from these elements, if one did not have to power to resist through sheer will and force of determination.

The grueling path to success is why success is so sweet. It is why success is to be respected, treasured and appreciated. When failure is the bill of fare on the entrepreneurial menu, it too should be respected and appreciated for what it is...an experience from which to draw lessons for the next round and the fuel to do it even better the next time. Defeat only comes when we accept it. Defeat only wins when the entrepreneur refuses to get back into the ring and go another round. By rejecting defeat, we move that much closer to success, even if we must come face to face with failure along the way. Failure is a temporary refueling facility on the way to success. Defeat is the end of the road, where energy, innovation and vision has been extinguished by the surrender of our will power and our drive to succeed.

All of us face the topic of your post, and the solidarity is felt like the ripples of a lake.

For me, failure and success are wholly acceptable and often find themselves working one with the other. Defeat is a self-imposed surrender that, I believe, each entrepreneur can only make for themselves.

Thank you for the topic Guillermo, and for the wonderful community represented here at IASE.

Will Griffith