Failings

We learn from our failings, not from our successes.

I was reminded of this when Ed Sheeran shared a song he put out on YouTube when he was 14 years old, conveying just how bad he was. Off pitch, poor timing, terrible guitar playing and quite simply in his own words, not good. He talks about how in 4 years it was his ability to fail continually that ultimately led to the success of his first hit the A Team.

As leaders in business we are often afraid to share our failings. We don't want to come across as weak or unknowing. After all, who would want to hire someone that doesn't have the solution or correct answer?

So I am challenging more of you to be willing to share your failings. The mistakes that made you feel like an idiot. The ones that when you look back you are just not sure how you could have been capable of such a thing.

One thought along this line that might resonate is when Kobe Bryant answered the question how does he feel when he loses a game. His answer? "Excited. Because it means I have something more to learn and take advantage of. I now have answers to help me move forward as long as I just look at them."

Our struggles and "failures" make us look at ourselves in the mirror and be honest and humble. A great recipe for learning to now take place.

So what was one of my big mistakes?

Well... I don't make mistakes...

I kid... lighten up.

I'll share two quick examples.

The first was in my first year as a high school basketball coach six years ago. It was an end of the game situation and we were down by a bucket with less than 10 seconds left. I decided to follow a feeling and subbed in a player that had barely played all game. He was a great practice shooter but really had very little game playing experience. The play would be a decoy with our best player in order to get our shooter off the bench a clear shot.

The result? An open shot with a mishandling of the ball and a turnover. We didn't even get a shot off. I think about that moment often. How I put a young kid that was not ready to be in a tough situation in a situation where it would be nearly impossible for him to succeed. I learned the hard way that there is a reason why the best player on the team takes the last shot under pressure. They are simply more used to the pressure and are better prepared to hit tough shots. They have earned that right and that night I robbed another deserving kid of that opportunity. Sure, your best player may miss as well, but they will always be your best bet to win the game.

The mistake I made in business?

I once started a product company without a true understanding of the cost to manufacture the product. To add to it, I did not develop a sound marketing or client acquisition plan. I believed that people would love the product enough to create an awareness simply through word of mouth and one or two trade shows. I thought that selling would actually be the easy part. So I allocated most of our time and budget to the creation of the product.

The company (New Custom) was something I was proud of. We were able to figure out some pretty great techniques in combining hardware and software together. But we recognized the manufacturing limitations and marketing challenges too late.

We learned pretty quickly that this business was no longer going to be something that we wanted to manage and scale. So in the end, the business failed. We failed. I failed. We lost money, lost jobs and had to close the business up. It also heavily affected our services business (Mobelux) and made life more than a little interesting for a while.

The lessons learned from that experience have been applied to multiple clients over the years. Hopefully, helping them avoid some of the heartache and pain that we had to go through in not only having a company fail, but the money and investment gone as well.

So I ask you to talk about more often some of the struggles and failures that you have gone through or may be going through currently. Learn to look at them in a light of learning and hopefully adopt a little bit of that Kobe mentality and get excited on what you are about to learn.