Does Failure Lead to Success? Only If You Know How…

by Rha K. Cardinale

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly” Robert Francis Kennedy.

The whole reason businesses fail to thrive is because they strive for aversion to risk. They tend to approach highly dynamic markets with the struggle against that risk for which, if they just gave in, they could truly become successful. Those businesses and organisations that continually outperform their counterparts take risks rather regularly and brace themselves quite liberally for the risks that may be involved to achieve the final success. This innovation becomes the success maker. It not only drives that company through failure and into success, it literally makes the failure seem a part of the plan and as just another step towards the ultimate end goal.

For example, for years after Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard Law School to forward his fledgling company Microsoft, his mother, Mary, saw this move as a disastrous failure.

We are often overly hasty in describing something as a success or failure, coming to conclusions when, in fact, the jury is still out. It is important to remember that “failures” often lead us to the deep learning from which great ideas emerge. Far from being night and day opposites, the line between success and failure is, in fact, indistinct.

The indistinct line between success and failure is often not seen clearly. Perhaps it would be more helpful to view that line as an interchangeable relationship of two supporting halves.

In western society the mindset often is to see things in a dualistic oppositional term, such as black or white, day or night, sunny or rainy, sweet or salty, and so on. When in fact, these cannot exist without each other and often are found together much like the sun usually can be seen somewhere on a rainy day, and clouds can be seen on seemingly sunny days. The eastern philosophy tends to embrace this duality as a dancing paradox that is part of life. The relaxed view can be seen in their explanatory terms sweet and sour, yang and yang, and therefore all things are seen on a level that promotes success, crisis is only the transition to something better.

Success and Failure Leading Each Other: Have you noticed that short term successes often are followed by hard to recover disasters? That is because quick fixes usually back fire. It’s sort of like a runner who happened across a sandy lot and decided to take it as a short cut, only to find that a few steps into it he steps on a thorny plant. He stops and picks out the thorn and keeps running, only to find himself in the middle of the thorny sand lot with thorns puncturing through the soles of his shoes. The only way to pick them out is to brace himself onto the ground that is over run by thorns, only to receive more and more thorns with every move. Having reached a good distance into this disaster area means that any way out will only treat him to more thorns and more pain. What was once a seemingly successful shortcut now becomes an utter failure.

An Innovation Approach: Japanese Samurai: Innovation is not a topsy-turvy unpredictable path that seems to lead straight into nowhere. It is a highly valuable and learned skill that must be mastered. Therefore, if you truly want to be mentored simply look to the Japanese Samurai for direction. Their life style and philosophy to life can provide examples of this art.

Samurais are known for their bravery and fierceness. Most people would agree that they were highly effective. The reason for this is their little known approach to life. It was a central mindset that guided their actions.

Samurais honed the ability to stay incredibly present. They understood that it was the will to win rather than the vision of winning that was the central key to victory. In fact, they lived by a credo of achieving the goal by ignoring the goal.

Although the vision for an innovation may be large, such Apple’s for IPods, the most we can ever truly see of the future is the next best step. It is important to bring our attention into this moment again and again, taking forays into the future, learning from the past and applying in the present. The key adversary of innovation is fixating on what worked in the past and what might go wrong in the future.

The enemy is looking into the future for what might go wrong or relying on the past for what will go right. The goal, therefore, is intended to be made and then filed away. Once you learn to let go of the goal you will learn to free up your mind to generate the steps to reach it. It may seem that some steps are irrational, but these must be taken. The greatest innovation were not based on what worked before, but were built on the known factors that needed to be taken as risks and that had to be acted on with a gut instinct.

Collaboration and Input: Any great goal requires a great team. This means that collaboration, speaking up, listening to new ideas and looking at it from another’s prospective will achieve the greatest final performance. A prime example would be the philosophy found at IBM, “The greater the level of collaborative innovation, the greater the financial performance. This requires acquiring the skills needed to work together as one. Leave the leadership desires at the door, and collaborate to come out of top.

Sometimes massive innovation flops, such as New Coke, will bite hard for a time only to become the greatest of booms in the longer term. The good news is that if you constantly practice innovation you will learn how to turn your failures into successes and build upon that which is working.

To master innovation you need to release yourself from the fear of failure and the need to succeed. In fact, an outcome orientation to innovation is the killer. If you or your team has a pattern of needing to be sure of your outcome you will only generate the kind of caution and paralysis stops you from ever achieving great results.

If, on the other hand, you are able to create a culture founded on reinvention you will constantly be evolving to meet the needs of a changing economy.

Business can learn great things from our children. To consistently grow they need to be open to vision, ideas, and look at the world with fresh eyes. They need to leave behind the deeply entrenched belief systems, and patterns of perception, along with the taboos and rules of the past. By changing our habits in thought we can change our outcome.

About the Author:

Author: Rha K. Cardinale is an expert at transforming organisations and to create a culture of innovation. see the “Great Leadership” website for more great ideas on building innovative teams