Not Just Mistakes, Failure

There’s a great post on the difference between mistakes and failure at Kevin Eikenberry’s blog.

He suggests that mistakes are one time events that are an inevitable element of an innovative culture, whereas failure is a long term outcome of faulty thinking.

Kevin, you don’t go far enough!

The idea behind my “Fail Spectacularly!” is rooted in the same thinking that underpins your post, but with one important aspect: the willingness to dare.

Embracing mistakes without also allowing for the possibility of spectacular failure—in a business culture—will result in a solid, respectable, #2 company.

At best.

Nothing wrong with that, by the way.

But if someone wants to win, they’re going to have to go for it.

“Who dares, wins.”

This means they’re going to have to take a strategic risk. Hopefully, they do this in a systematic way that includes as much risk mitigation as possible, but at some point, someone is going to have to say, “Hey, no one does it this way, but we’re going to. We are going to purposefully introduce this particular perspective to our thinking… and we’re either going to win big or lose in a big way.” It upon this foundation that innovation and mistakes are then embraced.

This is Apple, with a business model that was an anomaly for its industry. This is Amazon. This is Google. This is Tesla.

The question you need to ask yourself is, is it you?

Are you most comfortable with the status quo? Do you embrace mistakes but not failure?

Or are you willing to risk spectacular failure for the possibility of success?

(It’ll be interesting to explore this concept next Saturday at HRevolution. I have a hunch that there is more of an appetite for learning to take key risks and living your story today than there has been in recent years. We’ll certainly see!)

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.