Failure, as defined by the folks at Oxford, means to omit an expected action. The question I ask is, to whose expectation does this refer? I’d say too often to the wrong person.
Most of us, to varying degrees, make decisions in attempt to meet the expectations of others—about what to study, where to work, how much to earn, what entities to worship, and much more. Even when I think that my present self may be an exception, I can’t help but remember that my current situation has been irreversibly impacted by the decisions I made when I was younger, many of which were, indeed, influenced by others.
Regardless of whether you consider when you’ve aspired to do what others wish of you, I’d argue that we all do so at some point, by virtue of being products of our environments, environments that ingrain in us most of the assumptions by which we live. In other words, feeling this obligation to others—in our inner circles especially—happens effortlessly, because we have a tendency to convince ourselves that we share their expectations.
If that explanation wasn’t simple, my redefinition of failure might be: failure should not refer to the inability to gain others’ approval. Failure should mean the act of doing that which doesn’t represent our genuine selves. So keep the new faces of failure in mind as you embark on your New Year’s resolutions, and especially as you decide what businesses to start next.
The new faces of failure
Not meeting your obligations—aside from being irresponsible, not following through on obligations hurts others and damages your ability to inspire confidence in them, particularly those you wish to earn as allies, everyone from employees to mentors. Make good on your agreements. Have the discipline to adhere to your schedules. Garner the will power to stick to your resolutions. And follow through on your promises, even to yourself. Easier said than done, but I promise you that meeting obligations will give you that warm, fuzzy feeling of having your $h** together.
Not having an opinion—not having an opinion is a cop out because it enables us to displace blame when plans go awry and leaves us susceptible to the negative influences of others. Having an opinion, then, means understanding what you love and value, and therefore requires some personal investigation into what those things actually are. How do you know you don’t love sheep tail if you’ve never tried it? (It’s disgusting, by the way). And how are you justified in advancing an opinion if you’ve never validated the assumptions on which it’s based? To borrow a startup example, lean management requires that startups validate their assumptions about how to serve a market before defining a business model, charging them to validate those assumptions firsthand—by soliciting feedback, experimenting and iterating. If we, like businesses, want to maximize our value, should we not similarly validate (or invalidate) our own assumptions? And should we not experiment and iterate (i.e., question status quo, explore new territory, and push boundaries) to do so?
Repeating the same mistakes—the difference between a mistake and failure is that mistakes only happen once. I’m overgeneralizing, but my point is one about personal growth: we grow by learning from mistakes, and we stagnate by failing. Mistakes are an option. Failure is not.
Not creating based on your assumptions—our opinions (and the validated assumptions underpinning them) form our decision-making frameworks, and our creations are the physical representations of those frameworks. Failure is not producing the things (e.g., companies, art, ideas or otherwise) that represent our frameworks accurately. But the greatest failure, perhaps, is not producing anything at all. We can’t make mistakes without creating. And we can’t learn without making mistakes.
Allowing others to validate you—the fear of being judged, especially when we have fallen short, is so great that it prevents many of us from ever even attempting to create. Failure is allowing others’ judgment to define your identity and validate your accomplishments. No one else should define you, validate you, our prove you but you.
Mitigating risk
The way to mitigate risk of the new failure is to not set yourself up for failure in the first place. Don’t overextend yourself. Don’t agree to contracts you aren’t comfortable with. Don’t do business with people you don’t trust. And don’t chase trends. Instead, be reliable. Believe in something, as long as you have authentically arrived at the conclusion yourself. Learn from your mistakes. And above all, create what you believe in. It’s a scary proposition to fall short in attempting to live like this, because you can’t avoid ownership of the potentially negative results. There is great risk involved. But aren’t we minimizing this risk, anyway, by pursuing what we love—by spending all our marginal moments impassioned, obsessed even—and excelling at what we pursue because we’re good at it?
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