Too Afraid To Fail?

"Warning: Past success does not guarantee future success. People tend to praise you for present results that have come about because of good decisions in the past. Unfortunately, at the very moment you are enjoying your best results you may be making the decisions that will lead your company to extinction." - Max McKeown

An interesting area of corporate culture has to do with the fear of failure. I have known senior executives whose careers have been ruined by even perceived failures. Yet, others were permitted by their companies to fail and therefore learned valuable - and later profitable - lessons from failed product launches. The same is true is professional sports - the merciless firing of a coach for a losing season that he probably could not have changed anyway (as a result of the resources or skill levels of players he had to work with). On the other hand, other coaches last for many seasons with losing records. There certainly is no consistency in how failure is treated from company to company or team to team. Just as there is no consistency on how people deal with failure.

The uncertainty that comes with failure makes it that much more fearful. In some ways, the fear of failure is also tied to the fear of the unknown. We're never really sure what failure will bring - for some it spells the end of a job. But does not that end sometimes lead to a new beginning and better future? Henry Ford's first two automobile companies failed. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for lack of skill. John Grisham's first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and twelve publishing houses. You get the picture.

There are plenty of pithy sayings like "tough times do not last but tough people do" that might help you deal with "failure." But the most important thing you can do when you fail might sound odd - embrace the failure. It very well might be the most emotionally draining and challenging thing you can do, but by putting your failures under a magnifying glass you'll see that you can learn from them. Most importantly though, you'll probably learn more about yourself. And that you are not a failure - even though you may have made some bad decisions that caused one.

Your failings do not make you the person that they make you feel like. Now look inside yourself and understand that you may never be able to fully predict the outcome of your decisions but that factor should not prevent you from moving forward after failure. You still have time to change the road you're on. Be not afraid to fail.