Failure can be quantified as a process, as a phenomenon, as a universal.
“You’re going to fail. The question is, will you fail successfully? Here’s the steps you can take—before, during and after any endeavor—to successfully deal with setbacks, catastrophes, and other forms of ‘not getting what you want.’”
Our world is so connected that failure is no longer an “ad hoc” proposition. Things fail and affect the entire world—whether it’s the net-wide impact of a twitter “fail whale,” or the failure of sub-prime mortgages, or the failure of Detroit.
Everyone pays lip service to failure, but no one REALLY wants to dig into the guts of it. We all talk about creating cultures where it’s “safe to fail,” where people should be able to try, to push the limits. But let’s face it—we don’t see a lot of conference podiums filled with failures.
Which is too bad. Because failure is a fact of life. It happens, it will continue to happen, and we need to 1) plan for it, 2) learn how to “work” with failure and 3) really learn how to learn from failure and build on it. We believe there are universal qualities to all failures—not the least of which are the ways the human mind works in complex situations. We believe that failure has its own “logic,” and that we can educate people about the logic of failure as a phenomenon.
We are devoted to a greater understanding of:
– How we fail
– Why we fail
– How to fail “better”
– How to learn from and build on failure
We define failure as the inevitable steps on the way to success. Icarus Talks works to educate people, business leaders, corporations, governments and other organizations on how to incorporate inevitable setbacks and glitches into their endeavors.
THE UNIVERSAL PATTERN
Look at any endeavor—before, during, after. Whether you’re an engineer, a designer, an entrepreneur, a manager, a family member, there are certain things we all do when we set out to accomplish something.
We:
– Define our expectations and goals
– Create a model for reaching those goals
– Gather information about the resources needed to fit that model and reach those goals
– Predict and extrapolate
—Schedule, assign tasks, gather resources.
All of these steps expose our falibilities. To begin with, in a very complex world, it’s VERY hard to make a dependable model of reality, in any endeavor. We know two things: 1) almost everyone’s reality model is wrong and 2) the great leaps come from people who think the world is wrong and have an idea they “know” to be right.
Or, as William Goldman once said of Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.”
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A lot of this interesting thinking on failure comes from engineers—they’re always putting sensors into their work, so they can look at data on a constant basis. Human endeavors are a little more difficult to calibrate—who do you talk to? who do you trust? when should you make a decision based on what others have told you?
On the other hand, engineers are not immune—Donald Dorner (guy who wrote book about Chernobyl) writes about the “flattering delusions” of the engineers at Chernobyl who, even as they violated safety rules, thought “we’ll be okay.”
IF you have good feedback loops, then you can probably avoid the “persistence becomes foolishness” conundrum.
Failure Vs. Success
Sccessful people ASK MORE QUESTIONS AND MAKE MORE DECISIONS AND CHANGES IN THE SECOND HALF OF A PROJECT. They can live in the uncertainty that comes from saying “My initial assumptions were wrong and I need to make some changes.” Those who fail make fewer changes and ask fewer questions as they move further along.
Groups tend to work against asking questions and making new decisions. When they do ask / decide, they tend to “oversteer,” and make many many corrections aimed at getting “back on track.” (When, in fact, the track is the problem!)
A successful person knows how to re-evaluate. They can embrace the uncertainty created by data that doesn’t fit their current model, and ask “okay, that’s real data… what’s wrong with the way I’m thinking.”
There are many interlocking factors that you can count on to bring you failure:
– Acting without prior analysis
– Failure to anticipate the “side effects” of your actions (Short and long-term)
– Being overinvolved in “projects” or small steps, at the risk of the big picture
– Being prone to cynical reactions to incoming data (Assuming the worst… just as bad as assuming the best.)
WHAT MAKES SUCCESS?
Success often comes from making MORE decisions, especially in the second half of a project. Many people start thinking “the ship has sailed,” and keep sailing off the cliff. On the other hand you want to avoid “oversteering”—which is defined as “constantly shifting to get back on the course you thought you should be on, despite evidence that says you shouldn’t be heading that way.” (GROUPS tend to oversteer.)
HOW TO FAIL
There’s a lot of really shallow literature on “how to fail.” Most of it is of the “pick yourself up / dust yourself off” variety. “Don’t call it failure / call it ‘loss,’” “Get a win right away!” etc. etc. We believe this is wrong.
RANDOM:
Donald Keough (coca-cola guy) has 11 rules… a more popular way of framing the questions:
WAYS TO FAIL (keough)
1- Quit taking risks
2- Be inflexible
3- Isolate Yourself
4- Assume Infallibility
5- Play the game close to the foul line (court “cheating”)
6 – Don’t take time to think
7- Put all your faith in experts and outside consultants
8 – Love your bureaucracy
9- Send mixed messages
10- be afraid of the future
11- Lose your passion for work and life
