Failure is in. There is even a FailCon in San Francisco, according to an article in the New York Times. Or there was FailCon. It seems that in Silicon Valley, so many people claim failure as a positive sign of success that FailCon is passé.
In a blog called “101 Startup Failure Postmortems” people whose start-ups failed examine what went wrong–everything from not enough money for several iterations to swallowing pride.
The point of the article was that more and more people are admitting failure. This gives me hope for the future. I’ve always said I don’t want to work with anyone who has not failed, because they aren’t trying hard enough.
Failure feels awful, it hurts, it makes you feel miserable. But you learn. As you breeze along on the wave of success, you don’t ask “What is working?” you just enjoy. When you get pushed to the bottom and get sand in your shorts, you take a close look, learn and solve the problem. Problem solving comes from making mistakes.
The Mullah Nasrudden knew this in the 13th century. He said, “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”
—Quinn McDonald is a recovering perfectionist.
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