Recruiting Bootcamp Tip #5 - LEARN FROM FAILURE

This is the picture of failure.

It’s called the Toyopet Crown. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone. But it’s Toyota’s historically top seller in Japan. It’s also the longest running passenger production car – having been in production since 1955 up to today. Japanese consumers have bought this car in droves along with the Japanese government, taxi companies, and police departments who all snap these cars up in bulk. It had cool suicide doors and was light and quick. It also came standard with a then unheard of radio and heater and boasted a fantastic suspension system for Japan's muddy roads of the day.

Yet, it's the picture of failure for Toyota. But if you were to ask Toyota executives, that failure was a great thing. You see, at Toyota failure is a part of their successful innovation process... if you learn from it.

When the Toyopet Crown was launched, it became an instant, massive hit in Japan. So Toyota confidently shipped it off off to America as their opening salvo to crack into the booming American car market. It debuted in California in 1956 with the goal of becoming the car of choice for American families. Instead, it became a joke.

The Toyopet was too cramped for bigger American bodies and crawled to get up to speed due to it's tiny engine compared to its American counterparts. To make matters worse, when the Toyopet did get up to speed on America's newly built interstate system, it shook violently at higher speeds, making it unsafe and unsuitable for families. Because Japan hadn't yet built up highway infrastructures in the 1950s, their cars were designed to function well on muddy, pot-hole filled country roads, often not reaching speeds of 40 miles per hour. Toyota fled the US car market and didn’t return for 8 years.

By American standards of the day, the Toyopet was a failure... even a humiliation for the proud company. But what matters more is how Toyota reacted. It reviewed what went wrong and learned from it. That glaring failure became the driving force behind Toyota’s newfound respect for systems. Toyota leaders at all levels vowed never again to design and market another product in a vacuum.

A company, a team, a leader, or an individual who can accept and learn from failure is going to be more successful – and happier – than an equivocator who avoids risk lest something go wrong because something will always go wrong.

Before the calendar flips over, sit down and write out your failures this year. Then, write out solutions to those failures; and plan out how you will handle similar situations next year. If you can learn from your failures like Toyota, you'll most certainly have a more productive 2021.