Archives: failure

For the last two years on January 1st I’ve sworn to myself I’m going to revitalise this blog and do things differently. I haven’t. I’ve spent the last two Januarys and Februarys slowly failing to keep up with a constant schedule, largely because I can never work out what this blog is supposed to be.

So from tomorrow I’m going back to my roots and this will be about one thing and one thing only: that little thing that makes me smile every day, whatever it may be.

Way back in the beginning, that’s all this blog was supposed to be. Some of it was going to be able daily battles (and that’s what ended up in the book), but it was also here to remind me to keep smiling, no matter what.

Whatever happens over the coming months and years, wherever my health takes me and whatever else life throws at me, this blog will be here not only to document the process, but also to remind me when the going gets to its very toughest, that the world is really a very funny place and you have to keep on smiling, because the other options are too dark to think of.

That’s what I’ll be doing from now on. And don’t worry, you’re excused if you no longer want to listen.

Keep smiling!

In yesterday’s post I talked about how mistakes are now open for public consumption thanks to the permanence of the internet.

What does that mean for innovation and leadership?

It means you have to fail bigger. Fail better. Fail publicly.

Too many people see the increased visibility of failure as a reason to go all out to avoid cock-ups.

Au contraire. The bigger, the more significant, the more noticed the fail, the quicker, the stronger, the more good-humoured the recovery, the deeper, the longer, the more profound the admiration will be.

Set an example. Tell the world it’s OK to fail before you get things right.

I rarely give things up for Lent. A few years ago, I gave up going into hospital , but that one didn’t last, thanks to those pesky medical people trying to keep me alive.

This year, though, I’m vowing to give up the fear of failure.

Too many of life’s decisions are governed by the “what if it all goes wrong?” question or “what if I look silly for trying it?”. Too often we skip over great opportunities because we can’t immediately see how to make them work and we worry about what it’ll look like to our friends, colleagues and clients if they don’t.

So this month I’m going to enter into every project with a sense of the infinite possibilities as opposed to the dread of defeat.

That’s not to say that I will be hurling myself into projects willy-nilly. Fear of failure is very different to realistic expectations for the success of a project and if it doesn’t make financial (or time-cost) sense, then it will remain on the back-burner for the time being.

What are you going to commit yourself to for Lent? What are you afraid of failing? Announce yourself here – loud and proud – and we’ll all keep tabs on each other.