A colleague asked me recently how I felt about the popular advice, “Fail Faster.” Some highly successful entrepreneurs and innovators have recommended that increasing the failure rate will accelerate the arrival of success. Not true. I agree with their underlying intent, but I disagree that the goal should be to Fail Faster, or even to fail at all.
The goal of any endeavor is to Succeed. More failing doesn’t bring about more success. You might say, “What about Thomas Edison’s famous thousands of failures in his effort to create an electric light?” I’d say, Edison was the world’s greatest experimenter and a person dedicated to finding the correct solution. His goal was to succeed and, though he failed often, his goal was never to fail. The goal was to succeed in finding what worked. So he had to eliminate what didn’t work. Did he fail?
Let’s define failure. Failure is when you do not achieve the desired goal and you accept that state. You give up. A failed experiment isn’t really a failure at all. As Edison said, “I now know over 3,000 thing that won’t work.” He discovered many new insights on his way to the electric light, and he also invented the phonograph, the motion picture, and the creative use of a laboratory as a learning and discovery tool.
So how about this: we agree that failure is never our goal, it’s simply the feedback on the way to the goal. A similar bit of bad advice is that you should become a Risk Taker. Again, wrong premise. It’s not about increasing the risks you take, it’s about being adventurous and experimental even when there’s a reasonable risk. One who becomes expert at risk taking also becomes reckless and increasingly vulnerable. Should we take risks? Sure, some times and some risks, but there are other risks that are downright foolish to take. It’s about exploration and trying new solutions, not about increasing the amount of risk.
Likewise, the Fail Faster idea, it’s not about failing, it’s about experimenting. If you fail, too bad. Get over it and try something else, but the goal is always to Succeed.
So how do you increase your Success Velocity™ (speed of advancement toward a goal)?
By taking reasonable risks, accepting the failures that may come, then recovering and rebounding instantly so as to stay engaged and moving forward.
This is not just positive thinking. The underlying reason for attempting is in order to succeed, not to fail.
If you wanted to fail more often you might do something like making 100 bad sales calls on the wrong people in order to get closer to a Yes. Won’t work.
You have to call on the right people with the right approach in hopes of making every call a success.
And yes you can also make the case that striving for perfection is not reasonable in all activities, but at the same time, if you’re not giving your best to each effort then you’ve squandered your opportunities.
I say Succeed Faster, and if that causes some failures along the way, bounce back and try something else until you succeed. Your Success Velocity™ is your rate of progress toward your goal. It’s not just about speed, it’s also about advancement in the right direction. Focus on…Success!
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
Jim Cathcart is the bestselling author of 16 books and a “hall of fame” professional speaker. He has worked with 2,800 clients worldwide over his 38 years as a trainer and consultant. Jim is the founder of Cathcart.com and a frequent coach to many of his colleagues and clients.