Failing Forward

Here's part three of my reflections on Dean Caravalis' interview with Seth Godin from his blog Outrageously Remarkable.

"The challenge going forward if you have an organization is to understand how you’re going to process failure. Most CEOs say, ‘I’m in favor of innovation, but failure is not an option’ and as soon as you say that, you have to understand that neither is success. All innovation is a series of failures, and big companies, public companies don’t like to fail." – Seth Godin

This statement works at both a micro and macro level. We need to create organizational cultures that are accepting of failures. Equally as important is to take our own personal responsibility of this, especially for individuals in leadership positions. It's up to an organization to ensure we feel we've been given permission; however, it is up to us to decide to take it. 

Even though I know I've been given permission to try and to fail there is still an internal battle that I need to win. I love achieving, and often exceeding results, it's a personal point of pride for myself. The trouble is in order to truly innovate I will not make any progress on those results at times. I may even take steps back before moving forward. That's scary for me.

I don't think this is something that I struggle with alone. I grew up in a generation that studied to the test. We were constantly rewarded for the end results and often not the journey. This is now a part of how we show up at work. 

We're also at a time in our history that large institutions and big companies are struggling. Once you've stated this is what we do and how we do it and built up a house around that, it's hard to re-model. This is an age of uncertainty, which means embracing that what we do might not work. The only thing I am certain of is that the certain alternative will not work.