Seth Godin, one of the new world heroes, has failed.
He wrote a book about marketing, then broke the very rules he advocated in the book when bringing it to market.
You can read about it here, on his blog; he freely admits his failure.
Thank you, Seth.
Thank you for living up to your own standards. Thank you for helping the rest of us mere mortals embrace the ability — no, the mandate — to adopt failure as a means to learn, improve and move on. Thank you for turning failure into success.
A good friend reports that the venture capitalists looking at his start-up company were extremely interested in one aspect of the founders’ histories: their stories of failure.
Why? Not to bail out if they found checkered pasts, but because they actively seek out teams whose members have experienced failure. These capitalists understand that failure is one of the true means we have to gain knowledge, experience and success, as long as we seize the opportunities to grow. They get the nature — and the power* — of failure.
A Twitter search on “#fail” yields about 1 tweet every 10-15 seconds — as of 5:15 this morning, EST. That’s a lot of unhappy people, expressing frustration and dismay.
There are a host of corporations mentioned in those tweets. I’m sure some of the companies are actively seeking out the gripes and are committed to taking action…but I wonder about the percentage.
* For more on the power of failure, here’s a BusinessWeek article: How Failure Breeds Success.
Comments 2
the right kind of failure is a gift, not a trauma
well said!
Posted 12 Nov 2009 at 8:23 am ¶Failing, learning from that failure, and persevering is something that should be part of what is looked for when hiring. Instead, people tend to want to shy away from it, bury it, redirect the conversation etc.
I found this Will Wright (game designer) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_%28game_designer%29 quote on a blog that I follow:
Will Wright said he’s learned the most from games that seemed appealing on paper, but were failures in the marketplace. “I actually ask people when hiring how many failures they’ve worked on,” he said, “and I’m actually more likely to hire someone based on how many failures they’ve experienced. I think it’s the best learning system.”
Posted 12 Nov 2009 at 8:49 am ¶Post a Comment