First off, thanks for putting walternaeslund.com and honesty.se at two out of the three top positions for fastest growing sites in Sweden on SIS-Index. Awesome! They weren’t very big to start with, but success is not an absolute, but a relative.
Today I really don’t feel like talking shop. It’s just one of those days. Instead, I’ll get sentimental about some life philosophy, so if stuff like that make you puke, please feel free to come back tomorrow instead.
In particular, I want to write a little about failure.
Can you try stuff without risking failure? Well – not really. But you can minimize the risk of failure by staying safe, by looking back and keeping to what has been proven to work, by copying others. You can survive this way, but cannot push the envelope, and not truly live.
In times of change, I doubt that you can even survive this way. If the environment changes, you have to adapt. Otherwise you’ll die. It’s just Darwinian nature. And such as the times are now in our industry. We’ll see some deaths.
But testing and trying your way into a new future also means that you have to fail. A lot. As quickly and as cheaply as possible. A lot of people talk about this, but very few actually do it. Because really, it can be quite painful and even dangerous – and we like the comfort of staying safe.
I’ve failed quite a bit. And my failures have been painful, scary and sometimes even slightly dangerous. I get these failures thrown in my face from time to time, and I think that there’s an important lesson to be learned from that. Because, those are the times when you can really put your attitude to the test.
Basically there are two options when getting failure thrown in your face:
1. Get sad and mad.
2. Enjoy it.
Enjoy it? Well – yes. Because getting failure thrown in your face is like a receipt of trying. You know that you’ve been pushing the envelope. It’s like kids trying out how far they can go before they get reprimanded. It’s how they learn about life, because life is new to them. But really, the future is new to us all. Maybe we should embrace what kids do and provoke conventional wisdom from time to time.
I’m building an agency right now, and I know I might fail. If I do fail, I know a lot of people will love to hear about it and laugh and slander. Those are the people I love the most – because they are the receipt of the conventions I have challenged. I also know I may succeed, and then I will have won over my fear. It’s really a win-win situation.
Anyway – enough philosophy for one day. Time to get some stuff done. See you tomorrow for some more substantial blogging. I hope.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I wish you all the success in the world. Because we learn more from our success than our failures, and i know you love to learn (almost compulsively!): http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/successes-0729.html
Well, I think enjoying it is a bit too Hollywood-feelgoody an expression. But you’re on the right track. It’s important to keep thinking like a child, because children don’t have egos, and thus aren’t afraid of failing. Imagine a baby learning how to walk. He gets up, walks two steps, falls, gets up, walks one step, falls, etc etc. Would a grown up be able to handle all that failure and public humiliation and still keep trying until he learns how to walk?
On the other hand, I have a feeling that you are quite ready to drop the training wheels now. Oh wait, wrong metaphor
Feel like a douchebag by now always talking about Peaceful Warrior, but have you seen it yet? Good entertainment for a philosophical tuesday night!
Will check it out! And yeah, I may be a bit philosophically mushy today, but I did warn you!
I think embracing failure is really an even stronger competitive advantage today now that the cost of failure is dropping like a rock.
Sergej, do you have kids? because i couldn’t disagree more when you say “children don’t have egos, and thus aren’t afraid of failing”. when my son was 1 year old, and even earlier in fact, i can remember him being incredibly vexed if we dared to laugh while he was doing –or trying to do– something important, like putting a pea in his spoon, or trying to stand up. It became even worse as soon as he was able to assemble a few words. Babies do have strong egos, there is plenty of research that supports this.
Now, this said, i agree with the first part, where you say “it’s important to keep thinking like a child”. Children are resiliant, hungry for new experiences, they want to test things themselves and have to learn all the time. They dislike failure, have a strong sense of justice and fear humiliation, but they are so full of resources and creativity that they eventually overcome obstacles when the prize is worth it.
Matthieu: No, no kids myself, so I guess you pull rank on me on this one. Ego is hard to define, but what I mean is this: Sure, he noted the ridicule, and it annoyed him. But still note that he didn’t stop trying, he told you to shut up, and kept going. Most adults would have been afraid of even trying something in public knowing that there is a chance that they would fail and face humiliation – your kid didn’t, he told the adults to shut up and tried again!
That’s why children are the spiritual leaders of this age!
Frack ‘em. People who enjoy other people’s failures aren’t worth the bother of getting mad about. I think Honesty is honestly a great idea. Ad-agencies in Sweden need to get a grip. I’m so sick of watching bad site after bad site and the under-use of simple usability rules, SEO-tricks and plain good sense, that I’m about to scream. Don’t even get me started on the bloody Flash-sites. They’re an eye-sore and just plain stupid. If people would at least offer a CSS/Xhtml alternative, but no -always with the loading bars and the ‘cute’ effects and god-help-me-I’m-going-crazy pop-up windows.
//End rant.
In Winston Churchill’s opinion there is especially one thing which decides about success or failure: the courage to continue!