In 2019, I was busy building a lumber export business from scratch. I travelled from Toronto to Florida by road in search of logs and lumber that I could export to India. I had zero knowledge about this business but I was excited. I saw an opportunity!
After untangling the value-chain on the supply side, I went to India and travelled for 3 months building relationships with the buyers. As the business expanded, I soon found myself exploring both the European and the South American markets.
In March 2020, the COVID pandemic hit, and my business came crashing down like a house of cards. Prices skyrocketed, shipping containers became scarce, the buyers stopped placing orders and my capital was lost. My business was obliterated.
The financial setback in my business had a huge emotional impact on me. I had failed several times in the past but this one left me directionless and hopeless. The only advise I got was, “Don’t worry, you will be fine”.
No one told me that failures should be seen as a gift when one is on the path to building something meaningful. No one told me that:
Failures are necessary, and
Failures are important.
After a brief pause, I hit the reset button and started working on new ideas. I soon realized that my lumber venture had taught me everything about business. It gave me a chance to work on the entire spectrum of business operation. I found out that I could apply my experience in my new projects and fast forward my progress.
A Bias for Action
I wonder why failures are a stigma in our society? Why are we always taught how to avoid failure? Why do we always go for safety and comfort?
This conditioning from an early age prevents us from trying more and doing more, resulting in a failure to reach our full potential. Our desire for perfect outcomes makes us afraid to take more chances, leading to producing less work.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a few examples.
In Music
Beethoven and Mozart created more masterpieces because they generated more volume of work. A Nov 2008 study, analyzing 15,657 works by 65 composers, found that the duo tried more, failed more and succeeded more.
In Business
Henry Ford and his engineers revolutionized the world by building the Model T through a process of incremental failures and learning from them. He encouraged people to innovate. In fact, he had a rule for his factories: No one could keep a record of the experiments that were tested and failed.
In Sports
Michael Jordan, who is widely considered one of the greatest athletes in history has the following to say:
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan
In Technology
The concept of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in tech startups is based on the same idea. Build the product in a series of iterative steps and learn along the way. Fail often and fail fast is the war cry of ‘Agile Engineering’.
Learning from failures
Our ability to Learn is a superpower and it is important that we carefully analyze our decisions & actions to ensure success. Every situation is different and therefore one has to draw some unique lessons. But here are a few steps that one can generally apply:
Acknowledge - Accept the failure and avoid denial.
Analyze - Be objective and do the 5 why’s analysis. Don’t blame others.
Seek Feedback - Doc Rivers said, “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.”
Course correct - Apply the learning.
In Conclusion
Intuitively, we all know that the path to success is filled with failures. I wish children are taught to embrace failures and not to avoid them.
Failures can leave deep emotional scars; therefore Emotional Management is something that deserves a separate post, which I will be writing soon. However, Stoicism and help from our support network, can greatly improves our emotional responses.
To sum up, here is what we need to do:
Take lots of action - Avoid overthinking
Learn from the failures
Manage our emotions
Never give up! - Never ever!
Watch my short video (46 seconds) explaining “The law of action & failure”.
Let’s encourage ourselves to try more. Because Failure is a Gift!
I think a big problem is the school system. It is solely based on grade hierarchy where passing is applauded and failing is frowned upon. Some things need to change there
Addressing such a relevant issue makes the read very interesting and covers the entire cycle. Failure adds to lots of negatives which are required to be cleansed out of the system by ‘ tons of actions ‘ as you have brought out .