I did presentations to staff at Ronson today. Tonight we have a welcome reception for the Redmond Group who moved into our office on Monday. It is good to see the parking lot full and the sales floors buzzing.
I spoke about failure. There is a big difference between failing and being a failure. One is a learning and an opportunity to grow. The other is an end point. I talked about some failure being good because it means you are trying hard and moving near the edge. Those who never fail never grow or learn or move forward.
Thomas Edison spoke of Overcoming Failure: I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
I have always said "fail often, fail fast, fail cheap".
Success and failure are linked. Great successes also have their fair share of failures.
My mother used to say that the only failure was something you didn't learn from and the only thing that would make you a failure is if you quit trying and trying to learn.
ReplyDeleteThat's worked better for me in my life when I change the term "trial and error" to trial and feedback. It takes the sting out of learning from less successful efforts and it reminds me that we need to learn from success, too.
Undoubtedly we learn more from our failures than from our successes.
ReplyDeleteFailures are fine as long as you learn from them and do not let them happen again.
What can I say, I feel Like Mr. Edison. :). I do beleive that failures or concepts that may be too far ahead for the crowd are not really failures, just something to learn from and move forward, keeping ideas that continue to percolate and push the envelope sometimes.
ReplyDeleteHAve a great week.