Why is Failure a Bad Thing?

I am actively failing. Right this moment.

What a wild concept to throw out as my first Blog post, right? Announce to the work that I'm not accomplishing what I am setting out to do.

However, I don't view it as a negative. Failure is an intrinsic aspect of effort.

If I never try then I will never fail. If I always try then I will occasionally fail.

In the Air Force, we had a saying "if you never broke it, you never worked on it". At the time, it was a silly saying my supervisors would throw out when I stripped a screw or broke something minor. It is now one of the core principles of my leadership style.

We are going to fail. We often know what we are most likely to fail on. If we know that much, we can plan and we can mitigate. If we are comfortable with the concept of failure, we can enable innovation. Through innovation, we find sustainable success. Let your team fail sometimes and teach them how to positively respond to failure. Build systems that mitigate the risks of failure and watch your team develop into something exceptional.

Originally posted as a LinkedIn post at https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentmcdowell/ in November 2023.