I’m thinking about my son. He’s small now. And he’s just learning about how to use his hands, feet and voice.
He tries new things over and over again until he gets them.
He makes mistakes and continues to work at them until he masters them. Then he takes that mastery and moves onto the next thing.
In one line of thinking, he’s engaging in focused or deliberate learning.
In tech language, he’s continually failing forward.
I don’t know how you feel about the word failure. It’s a word that is used liberally to describe mistakes. Things that didn’t go right. And outcomes that didn’t meet expectations.
It’s a word that has accumulated a certain mysticism in tech circles.
But it’s a blunt instrument.
Stand in front of the mirror every day and tell yourself you’re a failure, and the outcome is predictable.
Zero failure
I was in a private coaching event recently where I heard a different approach to failure. The discussion was about the common patterns of super successful individuals.
The discussion was around the elements that contributed to their success. The attitudes and beliefs that helped them move forward. The practices and routines that were common amongst several different individuals.
One of those traits or beliefs was this: zero failure.
They didn’t believe in failure.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t make mistakes.
It means that they didn’t stand in front of the mirror and tell themselves they were failures every time they made a mistake.
They didn’t call everything that didn’t work out a failure, no matter how sexy the people in tech make it sound.
It’s too debilitating, counterproductive and emotionally draining.
Embrace feedback
If you’re in marketing, you are out testing ideas all the time.
You are talking to customers with carefully crafted questions.
You want to know if your campaign has merit in your target market.
You want to find out if the campaign missed the mark.
And you want to do that as quickly as possible so you can make adjustments or cut your losses.
This process involves a lot of false starts sometimes.
Your idea might not have merit or be off the mark a bit.
The idea might be way too early. Or poorly articulated, so the response you get sounds negative.
You are receiving a lot of information, but what you aren’t receiving is failures.
Sometimes a campaign is meeting the right market at the wrong time..
If the execution sucks, the campaign might struggle and fizzle out.
But after every one of these, what you have is information.
Forget failure and think tuition
In trading, you have this thing called an equity curve. It’s the accumulation of resources over a period of trading. How much did your account grow? Your profit and loss statement might give you some indications of how you are performing.
For example, you might have three times the number of losing trades compared to winners. Or 60% of your trades are losers versus winners.
Your losing trades could be tests to see how the market behaves. They might be designed to adjust your thinking by having a position on. Nothing focuses attention and thinking like having some risk on.
Every loss is a piece of information.
It tells you about your trading thesis. It tells you about your trading plan and execution. It tells you something about the market and its behaviour at the time. It provides information to be integrated into your next trade.
We used to call these losses, tuition.
Stop punching yourself
In the startup space one of the biggest challenges is the fear of failure. They may not articulate it, but it’s there under the surface.
The fear of failure, or worse, the acceptance they will fail becomes a barrier to entry.
The barrier isn’t that the idea isn’t good or that it requires refinement. The barrier is a belief based on fear. And the fear of failure is real and daunting.
You could put the fear of failure down as one of the barriers to entry on your business plan.
Every time you use that word, you are punching yourself inside.
It stops you from taking action.
If I didn’t know better, I would think the word was popularized today to create a barrier to entry.
And this can apply to edgy marketing campaigns that are going to go against the industry consensus.
The only failure is not trying in the first place
As you explore an idea, no matter how crazy, find a process that helps you understand it.
Test your idea with the deliberate intention of getting feedback. Feedback is important information for ideation refinement.
Take criticism as an opportunity for growth.
It’s only data after all. Tuition.
Use your mistakes as tuition for the next thing and the future.
Forget failure. That’s for mistakes that are repeated without learning.
And frankly, the only failure that counts is not trying because you are afraid of failing.
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Getting some expertise outside of your organization can be a powerful way to get and test fresh marketing ideas.
If you’re looking for an edge in a tough environment, then we should talk.
Email me right here tristram@wordsunfold.com and let’s set up an appointment to chat.