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CMF Leadership & Followership "Hacks" and Micro-Training

This is an example of the micro-training pages you would receive twice monthly for just the low price of $4.99 per month.

THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE

You are kidding, right?  Success of failure?  How can you be successful or succeed if you fail? No, not kidding…I would rather work with people who have experienced failure and recovered from it, than someone who has never experienced failure.  As a matter of fact, failure makes us better, provided we don’t just quit!  (Seriously…Check out Thomas Edison’s quote below…)

While trying to teach my kids to ride their bicycles, I first held onto the seat of the bike and ran alongside as they pedaled down the sidewalk.  Eventually, I would slowly let go until they were on their own and riding down the street.  O.K., so they went an additional 10 feet and then…“crash!”  When they started getting up off the ground, usually crying and with skinned palms, I’d say, “Wow, look how far you went,” not focusing on the failure and crash, but on the success of the 10 feet they went by themselves. 

girl-father-learning-to-bike.jpg

Then I’d encourage them to get back on and this time, I held on a little less, they went even farther, and yes, crashed again, but only after riding halfway down the cul-de-sac that we lived in.  This time however, instead of crying, they knew they went farther and got up off the ground saying, “Look Dad, I went really far this time.”

​Riding a bike is much different than working for a living!  And…What does this have to do with leadership?  With success, people keep on doing the same thing. When they fail, they are forced to adapt and change. That is not just a human characteristic but constitutes a basic feature of how the mammalian brain works.  If a lab rat no longer gets rewarded for pressing a lever that had yielded food pellets before, it gets visibly upset. As its frantic efforts fail, it resorts to all manner of strange, or novel, reactions from grooming itself to biting the lever, or leaping into the air. It is learning that the world has changed and its brain is getting rewired, so to speak.

Failure to Success.jpg

  • People work the same way.  Our brains will make new connections and “learn” if what worked before no longer works.  We have developed the brain to adapt to our environment, so for that reason failure has actually helped us to move forward.  If we accept the failure and stop attempting to succeed, then we have failed only, but when we continue to endure risk and try to change something, then we are adapting.

    • Consider these examples:

      • Thomas A. Edison was told by his teachers that he was “too stupid” to learn anything.  He eventually invented the practical electric lamp, the phonograph, the movie camera, and held over 1000 patents.

      • Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor who said, “He lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”  Several other businesses failed before he made the movie “Snow White.”

      • Soichiro Honda was a mechanical genius who idolized Thomas Edison and rebelled against the norm.  His passion for aggressive individualism was more of a fit for the United States business world and he was alienated from Japanese businessmen who valued teamwork above all else.

      • After Harrison Ford’s first small movie roll, an executive took him into his office and told Ford, “He’d never succeed in the movie business.”

      • While developing his vacuum, Sir James Dyson went through 5,126 failed prototypes and his savings over 15 years…

    • ALL FAILURES!  Who ended up being successful in what they were attempting to achieve, because they didn't just quit!

  • PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER… It’s not hard to see that these people (and many others like them) have all failed at some time.  If we as leaders and liminal leaders (people who lead and follow simultaneously) only expect people to do things exactly correct the first time, or every time, then how can anyone get better, how can we as leaders and followers learn to adapt, especially if the situation changes?  The key is to let people make mistakes and fail.  But fail forward, i.e. learn from the mistake and failure.  Then adapt and change moving towards the reality or goal that they want, in essence, celebrate their success from failure like Edison, Disney, Honda, Ford and Dyson have all done.  And like almost every parent who has taught their kids how to ride a bicycle!

 

Quotes to Put into Practice…

  • “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to head the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates, Microsoft Co-Founder

  • “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” – Collin Powell, US Army General

  • “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”  – Thomas A. Edison, Inventor

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