FAILURE IS GOOD

I am Nigerian. When a politician fails to win an election in Nigeria he is deserted immediately. All his friends move away from him so fast you would think the politician had the Spanish flu and coronavirus together. When sports people like footballers, golfers, basketballers and so on don't win they lose endorsements. Companies move their dollars from those who lost to those who win. Why? The cameras and media make the same move. The loser gets very little or no airtime at all while the winner gets all the attention and companies want their brands to be seen. 

When you file for bankruptcy your debts will leave you alone but so will your credit rating and access to capital. Your inability to manage your money for whatever reason will hit you hard for the next 5 years. Can you see why people avoid filing for bankruptcy even when it's not an entirely bad idea? 

The point here is that our society is wired to see failure as bad and something that must be avoided at all cost. From a young age humans are bred to run far away from failure. Do you remember going home with a report card that suggested you didn't do well at school? I don't know if kids still get graded at school now but in my time I was graded. My mom made sure there were consequences attached to bringing home a bad result while my dad made sure there were rewards for bringing home a good result. I was raised in a balanced home. My mom did the whipping while my dad did the explaining, after the whipping. Even though kids don't get grades today they know when they have not done well. This article seeks to highlight the importance of failure and the lessons one can learn from it. 

There is nothing wrong with failure. Failure is a good thing depending on where you sit. From where I sit, I am not afraid of failure. In one of my jobs, the operation is set up in such a way that what I do is checked multiple times by 3 different people. My role is so sensitive that if I mix things up a domino of errors will be set off and the company will lose money. I had to complain. I was told it was necessary to avoid mistakes. It didn't sit well with me. I argued that trying to prevent me from making mistakes will make me redundant and stop me from succeeding in the role. I made it clear that I preferred setting up measures to deal with mistakes when I make them and not have someone over my shoulder checking on me every step of the way to make sure I didn't make a mistake. No one has come to tell me I made any mistakes. I catch my mistakes because of that I continue to deploy measures to make my process better. 

Failure is good. The bad thing about failure is being consistent at it. If you consistently fail at doing the same thing then that's a problem. The word FAIL is said to stand for First Attempt In Learning. There is no amount of preparation that guarantees success. There is no execution that goes 100% as planned. There will always be curve balls. If you have 100% execution it's an exception. The norm is that mistakes will happen. You will fail. The issue is what you learn from failure so as not to be consistent at it. 

My mentor, late Sir Gozie Anyachebelu, told me that his greatest skill is his ability to ask questions. He taught me that very well. He said asking questions reduces the chance of failure not prevent failure. When you try something and fail it is not the end of the world. You need to study the failure so you avoid it in your next attempt. There is something called 5 wives and 1 husband. That's the easiest way to remember who, what, why, where, when and how. These are questions you need to ask your failure. They are very specific questions that usually bring very short answers if you are sincere about a solution. Who failed/who did I fail with? Why did my plan fail? Where did things go wrong? When did things go wrong? How do I fix this?

Can you see how easy it is to analyse failure if you can get past the mental state of seeing failure as something that should be dreaded? Be proud that you failed. Why? You are better than many who didn't try at all. Don't be afraid to fail. Be afraid when you can't say why you failed. That's the issue. Failure is good.