
By Paul Dupuis
He was fired from the Kansas City Star with an editor’s scathing remark that he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas” as an animator. Unfazed, this young man bought an animation studio Laugh-O-Gram, but that had to fold up too.
Another young man faced the disappointment of being the only one of 24 applicants who failed to get a job at KFC. Neither could he get into Harvard in all the 10 times he applied. And his first two ventures met with failure. Do these stories spell failure? Seemingly so. But they were precursors to game-changing success — and both the young men went on to become iconic business leaders in their respective industries. The first was none other than Walt Disney, whose animation films and studios created and defined a genre. The second is Jack Ma, whose blockbuster e-commerce company Alibaba’s $150-billion IPO was the largest offering for a US-listed company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange.
There are many examples of leaders who experienced failure as a positive element in their saga of success. Their stories stand as testimonials to the fine line that waits to be stepped over between failure and success — the tipping point, you could call it.
Failing matters, if it creates value
Successful leaders know this profound truth only too well. The greatest failure lies not in the errors we make, but in fearing and assiduously avoiding the path of risk and possible errors. Here is an immense opportunity and potential to path-breaking success — do not limit yourself by a blinding apprehension of challenges in breaking the mould. Michael Jordan knew what he was saying when he asserted, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Assuredly, errors are integral to taking calculated risks. They are the result of out-of-the-box thinking to achieve unprecedented outcomes. They throw amazing insights into how to forge ahead as leaders. Because, success is not measured by how rarely you make mistakes — it is measured by how high you dare to set the bar and persevere to vault it.
Break free of a culture that only rewards perfectionism and penalises intelligent risk-taking when it fails. For this deters us from innovative thinking, looking ahead and moving forward. The value of failing is that it positively focuses on the upbeat excitement of trying and creating game-changing outcomes, and weans us away from the fear of failure that paralyses progress.
But beware: Failure is not always an honourable excuse
It is a paradox one cannot deny. Understanding success needs you to know failure. However, it is a trap too — the idealising failure as a ‘must have’ for success. It is one thing to take the stigma out of failure, and present it as an opportunity to transcend and transform. But it is quite another to treat it as a thoughtless badge of honour.
Of course, there are valuable lessons to be learnt from failure when we encounter them. But glorifying them makes us impervious to learning the more important lessons from the successes we achieve. For success is the reward for the meticulous diligence we demonstrate, and we need to define, plan and intelligently chip away at obstacles to achieve it. Hone your plans, skills, capabilities and execution for success, and build in how you will manage the odd failures to reach your goal.
And here is the true tipping point. Resilience in handling failure is a great attribute. But let us not fall into the comfort zone of exploiting it as an ultimate shield of emotional wallow. Let us aim to be gritty in handling failure, but let us primarily be smarter in planning for success with innovative and well-reasoned risks. Have a razor-sharp focus on success, but without the fear of failure.
In achieving our vision and goal, we have a choice. One is to wade through mistakes, and re-invent the wheel by trial and error. But here is a better option. Pursue your thirst for exploration and discovery. Tap into success factors of people who have cleared the thickets before us.
Imagine the great opportunity to smartly accelerate our journey into the exciting realms of the unknown. And this is what Sir Isaac Newton sums up beautifully in his classic quote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
(The writer is MD & CEO, Randstad India)