Comments

I watched it - it's great (i.e., short and to the point). I've heard so much about not being afraid to fail these days, but can't get my heart around it. Failure has consequences for me and the people who depend on me. Isn't being unafraid to fail a bit irresponsible?

Posted by Grant McMillan at December 17, 2009 1:58 PM

Grant, perhaps if the people around you accept and embrace the same attitude, failure becomes less likely? A lot of people willing to try new things and experiment together often results in what we might call "success synergy." But everybody has to be in it together. I firmly believe we don't usually fail BECAUSE of trying new, untested ideas; rather, we most often fail because we were too paralyzed to persist in taking that one uncharted step that would have put us in a totally new place, breaking through to a place called "Success."

Sure, it's risky, and your point is well taken. But the greatest innovators never accomplished their feats by being conservative. Edison could have stopped trying when the first attempt at a light bulb didn't work, opting instead to go shovel coal or something. Innovation is about things that are totally new. Doing what everyone else has proven will get you by will... well... get you by. That's about it.

Posted by Dan Gunter at December 17, 2009 10:12 PM

Great video, Tom. Thanks! I love these videos and I eagerly await the book.

I'm wondering that if the more you practice, as with all things, the better you become. Practice, by its very nature, means that you have not arrived at perfection. This being so, failure is likely. I do not expect to be perfect and I expect that I will fail.

What's interesting is the more I practice, which essentially means the more I fail, the better I become at a whole host of things. (This became clear to me as an opera singer in my early teens.) Doesn't confidence play a significant role in failing fast forward?

Love the story of Mr. Walton! He seems to have been fearless. But being fearless doesn't mean that you will not experience fear. I like to say that being fearless is not the absence of fear; it is moving forward in spite of it.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 17, 2009 10:36 PM

The fear/failure/courage piece is fascinating.

I think this gets very 1 dimensional in business - for example I am a naturally cautious person in what I do. But I scare the living daylights out of some people with what I dare to think.

It's funny, we see fear as something to be overcome, to avoid, to not have.

We don't think of fear as evolution's gift, a tool.

Fear tells us so much, it keeps us safe (I have a fear of jumping off tall buildings that I don't want to try to overcome).

It tells us when we reach our boundaries - so we know when we have pushed through them.

It keeps us honest - it nags us to check that customer invite one more time before hitting the printer.

It gives energy when we need it the most.

It's a complex, wonderful emotion - Avoiding it or overcoming it is powerful - using it would be mastery indeed.

I don't think we have done more than scratch the surface here.

Posted by PaulH at December 18, 2009 2:41 AM

Tom- isn't it funny that many of the people that have said they do not fear failure actually never faced a failure? Do they mean it or do they said it as a cliche?

Posted by Vlad Maior at December 18, 2009 3:29 AM

"…isn't it funny that many of the people that have said they do not fear failure actually never faced a failure?"

This thought is counter to the video. In fact, it seemed that Mr. Walton, not to mention Thomas Edison, had many great failures. The issue here seems to be getting over the fact that failure is inevitable. The only way that it isn't is not to be innovative. My engineering and artist friends understand this acutely. Practice matters.

As a matter of fact my best friend who is an engineer says that dealing with young Eastern engineers is very different from dealing with young American engineers. While this may be truer of young Easterners or young people in general, I think it is also true of older one too regardless of culture. But the young Eastern engineers he deals with seem to take failure by far more personally and typically would rather have a greater disaster later on than admit a smaller failure earlier in the process which, of course, becomes a bigger problem later.

I'm thinking that this is cultural and can be so in any environment. When I have been in the cleaners or the market and tried to make a simple point about this or that I have been confronted with great resistance on the most basics of concerns. Saving face is essential. Is handling fear and dealing with failure a cultural issue, as in what is accepted or not in various environments? This can be dealt with if accepted. In fact, the only way to change environments is to address the problem.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 18, 2009 5:13 AM

I am pretty sure this is a cultural problem. In fact I think it is cultural but not problem, if u get the difference. I am from Romania, speaking about Easterns, and the failure issue is hard to define amongst the eldest. The young people do get the importance of accepting failure and trying to face it.
So yes, it is cultural but I HOPE it is not a problem, to say it again.

Posted by Vlad Maior at December 18, 2009 8:28 AM

Hi Vlad - I wish I understood your point.Could you elaborate? But to be specfic my friend was referring to East Indian engineers and I to the Chinese and Middle Easterners. These are generalities, of course, as we can only speak for those we came in contact with. But I do believe that there are cultural differences with regards to environments regardless of race specifically or generally at work or home.

America, for example, has a culture and many subcultures which can be defined to areas and environments regionally and there are such with regards to large and small businesses. When I went to the KFC in the Bahamas there were items indicative to that culture which included fruit. The cashiers were also clearly Bahamian by nature in their responses and mannerisms. The same would be true for a cashier in the mountains of Tennesse.

In the Bahamas I noticed among the people not in the tourist areas that the people seemed fearless and wide open. There did not seem to be a fear of failure or of saving face. Everybody seemed to have a business of some type with varying degrees of success. This was amazing to see up close. Fear of failure seems cultivated at work and home. This is clearly seen in the training of toddlers which isn't all bad to young executives or engineers.

I hope this better explains my comment.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 18, 2009 6:24 PM

Every time I watch the Tom Hanks classic (at least, classic to me) "Joe vs. the Volcano" I think about how knowing he had only a few weeks to live made all his other fears irrelevant.

What could it possibly matter what others thought of him when he wouldn't be around in five weeks?

But then, really, what does it matter what others think of me, even though I will be around in five weeks, or five years?

I've rarely feared the hard costs of failure; I've always been overwhelmed and slowed by the fear of the appearance of failure.

Which, really, is kinda dumb.

(I'm erasing fear from my agenda in 2010. Y'all feel free to hold my feet to the fire.)

Posted by Joel D Canfield at December 28, 2009 4:41 PM

No truer words have ever been spoken. Failure to me has always been another word for feedback. It teaches us so much if only we choose to enjoy the right perspective. Sam Walton knew something about perspective as we can all now see.
Thanks Tom for sharing this. Amazing stuff.
Steven Diamond
http://www.stopstressingnow.com/2009/12/failure-just-another-word-for-feedback/

Posted by Steven Diamond at December 29, 2009 9:24 PM