Leveraging Failure

Failure does not define you.

Steve Jobs was fired from the very company he founded, Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and Bill Gates dropped out of college. Some of the most influential figures experienced failures on the very S-Curves they ended up mastering. And, they will often credit those failures as some of their greatest lessons.

Not all failures can, or should, be avoided. When you think of the most pivotal lessons in your life, are they from your biggest wins or easiest days? For me, the greatest lessons of my life have come from some of the darkest and most challenging times. The pain and frustration of failure imprints on us in a way that success cannot. Yes, it hurts, but it also offers us an opportunity to leverage the lesson for our own gain.

It is for this reason that I have made give failure its due Guardrail number #6 on the S Curve of Learning?. Acknowledging failure as part of the process (instead of trying to avoid it or ignore it), allows it to become a tool of creation rather than an instrument of shame.

Ben Shewry, a chef, entrepreneur and philanthropist, has both witnessed and experienced failure and has used it to inform, not define, his career. Today, he is the owner of Attica, a Melbourne based restaurant that is consistently named one of the best restaurants in the world. Ben shared his story with me on my Disrupt Yourself podcast, and it was a truly inspiring conversation. 

In 2002, from a small town in New Zealand, Ben chased his dreams of being a chef to Melbourne, Australia. For two years, he served as a pastry chef at a restaurant called Luxe. This would serve as Ben's training ground, where he learned his first professional lesson about failure when the restaurant went bankrupt. Though he was just a spectator at the time, the experience became an influential part of his story.

“I remember this very clearly because it was a very, very important lesson and it would help me a great deal in the future. But at the time it just hurt.”

What did this lesson teach Ben?

“Well, I learned to never give up, and I felt like the owner of that place gave up on his people too quickly and gave up on his business too quickly, and he got spooked.”

Ben leveraged the less of failure. He learned how important it is to consciously be present and focused on the business. Every business runs into issues – it is not if you will face problems but when. The important thing is to be aware so you can overcome the problems as they arise. And, to have the strongest possible team around you so, when problems do occur, you have the right team members to support you. A strong team is especially important for the areas in which you are less knowledgeable, like financials for Ben.

During his early years as a business owner, when making ends meet was a constant struggle and the risk of going under was ever present, Ben experienced failures, but he never let them stop him. He learned from them and was able to adapt into a successful business owner, who was ready to bounce back from anything. Well, almost anything.

Fast forward 16 years to March 2020 when Covid forced us all to disrupt ourselves. As news spread and Ben found out restaurants in Australia would be forced to close, his first thought was that his life’s work was being stripped away. But, because Ben had seen failure before and learned from it, those feelings were quickly replaced with the realization that he had to do something. He harnessed the courage he gained and the lessons he learned from his time at Luxe and in the early days of Attica. Thanks to his understanding of previous failures, the restaurant was in good financial standing, and he was surrounded by a strong team. The team came together and decided to disrupt the high-end dining experience of Attica and offer baked goods, take-out, and delivery. But he didn't stop there. After witnessing the struggles of migrant hospitality workers, Ben and his team started the Attica Soup Project. Not only did the team survive, they thrived in the midst disruption.

Intellectually, we know failure is valuable, but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable to experience. Many of you have probably asked someone else, “what can you learn from this?”, but how many of you have truly asked yourself the same question? We tend to hide from failure, we let the shame of failing get in the way of growth and disruption. Learning from failure is not instinctive, but if we allow it to be instructive, it can be a remarkable tool for self-disruption and creation.

What more can you learn from a recent failure? How can you use that to make you wiser and stronger for the future?

*****

If you enjoyed this article, here are two ways to stay in touch.

1. Sign Up for our Growth Through Disruption emails–––a weekly dose of personal disruption read by tens of thousands of people across the globe. No spam. Just a newsletter meant to help you grow faster. Sign up here.
2. Download this free resource on the seven guardrails of personal disruption. Visit whitneyjohnson.com/calm

*****

Whitney Johnson is the CEO of human capital consultancy WLJ Advisors, an Inc. 5000 2020 fastest-growing private company in America. One of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50, Whitney and her team are experts at helping high-growth organizations develop high-growth individuals. She is an award-winning author, world-class keynote speaker, frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School's Corporate Learning and an executive coach and advisor to CEOs. She is a popular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, has 1.8 million followers on LinkedIn, where she was selected as a Top Voice in 2018, and her course on Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times. In 2017, she was selected from more than 16,000 candidates as a “Top 15 Coach” by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.