A STUDY ON FAILURE - Part 1

Have you ever felt like a failure? I know I have recently. I also know this topic isn't a sexy one, but I think the last couple of years have been particularly hard for everyone (pandemic, anyone?) and failure (whether real or perceived) has been a frequent occurrence. Sometimes there are circumstances outside of our control that might keep us from achieving what we want, making it hard to avoid feeling like a failure. It's also particularly hard to not feel that way when our daily lives are centered around results, Key Performance Indicators (KPI's), the bottom line, the potential (or actual happening) of being laid off, etc.

But life is a lot more than all these things, and sometimes I have to thank a couple of good friends for reminding me of that ( Joe Staples , Alan Matheson , Jared Bennett, Josh Penrod , Daniel Marriott , Davis Smith , y'all know who you are, please accept the shout out ??).

So, I'm paying it forward by writing a series of articles on the very recurrent, poorly discussed, unattractive and uncomfortable topic of: FAILURE.

Exciting, isn't it? (Oh, I can hear the crickets now). Please, bear with me. Sometimes we all need to remind ourselves that eventually we all fail in life, and that no matter our mistakes or adverse circumstances, WE ARE NOT A FAILURE.

There's a composer by the name of Michael McLean , who wrote a song called "Gentle" that says:

"Like the friend who gently builds us up when we're down,

Like a gentle kiss can turn our world all around,

We've been hurt by others often,

We've forgiven and forgotten,

We should be more gentle with ourselves."

I wanted to write these articles, maybe so we can stop being so hard on ourselves, Mi Gente. It's time to separate adverse outside occurrences from our personal worth, the earlier is ephemeral, the latter is eternal, it's infinite. I really hope they help us see failure in a more objective manner and avoid the perception of "failure equals worth". Our worth by far greater, and that should be evident in our lives.

FAILURE, WHAT IS IT?

Failure can represent different things for different people, but for the sake of studying it, let’s define it as:

A result or results that are different from what is expected or wanted at a specific period of time.

Yeah, I know, this definition is kind of broad and sounds simplistic, but I’m being intentional here. I just want it to be broad enough so we can study the nature of failure and its ramifications. So, again, bear with me.

The next step would be to determine the different types of failure, but since there’s an infinite number of ways in which we can botch it, I preferred focusing on the ramifications of failure itself, and how they can be measured or classified. So, this point of view is about the vectors or dimensions of failure.

DIMENSIONS OF FAILURE

Failing at something can be painful, but we can still learn about it and dissect it. This exercise might even help us see failure as something that is part of life, but not part of us. Again, we're not failures. A quote by Jeffrey R. Holland says: "No one has failed who keeps trying..." (he also says in the phrase, "...and praying" by the way).

Acknowledging that there might be additional ways to see failure, in the next few articles I'd like to study failures from different perspectives, among them:

• Time
• Perception
• Magnitude
• Repeatability
• Re-directability
• Attribution

During the following weeks we'll see in more depth each of these dimensions. And if it's not too much to ask, I'd love for you to share in the comments your thoughts, feelings or even personal experiences on each of them Today, we’ll study the first of these vectors.

TIME

A time to fail

Is failure never an option? The simple answer to this question is a resounding: NO. To put it simply: Failure can and sometimes should be an option to consider. The issue is knowing when and how. Also, finding out what and how we can learn from it.

A scripture in the Old Testament (and an awesome 60's song by "The Byrds") bears the adage:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven... A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up... A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away... (Ecclesiastes 3: 1,3,6).

Just like there's "a time to break down", there is also a time to fail, and even to seek after failures. Yes, there are times when we actually want to fail, not because of some sort of death wish, but because of the imperative need to obtain information to prevent greater failures in the future.

Examples of these occasions are present in particularly diverse scenarios. They can be as random as Brazilian Jiujitsu (they say that in BJJ you win or you learn, you never lose) to flight training, to engineering. In these situations, failure needs to be an option, otherwise we're simply never going to obtain crucial knowledge in our professional fields or even in our personal lives.

Furthermore, even when we're not training (and therefore trying to NOT FAIL), failure can become an effective teacher. We just need to have the right set of mind.

The right mind to fail

I'm not going to waste your time emphasizing the importance of a positive attitude, I want to go a little deeper. There are some attributes that can help us learn the right lessons when facing adverse results, among them: Curiosity & Patience.

Curiosity: My favorite (and the favorite of many around the world) character in the Star Trek franchise is Spock (Hey, by now you should know that I'm a bit of a geek, ok? Deal with it????). To the detriment and irritation to Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock often reacted to adversity and dangerous situations with a one-word statement: "Fascinating".

Now, I do believe in showing more empathy when people are going through a difficult time. And yet I also believe that remaining curious while going through trials puts us in the mind frame of a learner, even a disciple. We're not only eager to obtain knowledge, we also possess a sense of fascination and wonder for whatever scenario is placed before us. Preconceptions and bias take a back seat. Experience is sought after. Knowledge is welcome and we emerge better prepared for future challenges.

Patience: In all honesty, I'm not good at this one, as I like to get things right, immediately, and at my first attempt. This type of attitude simply leads to frustration. But we need to remember that knowledge comes sometimes by the mere act of trying and failing. Let's keep in mind that sometimes it's about the journey and not the destination.

More on failing and time

Failure can take place at a single point in time or over a prolonged period. Determining the time and duration of the failures will give you an important insight into its nature. On a different note, failure as we see it implies a difference between what we wanted or expected, and what actually happened; thus, failure can be seen through two temporal tenses or perspectives: Past & Present. No future to account for here, as failure has not occurred yet.

Naming the tenses might seem bit on the nose here, but I’d like to emphasize that if the results aren’t in for whatever endeavor we’re involved with, that means we don’t actually know whether we failed or not. In other words, if we don’t have the results WE HAVEN’T FAILED YET. And because of that we should take it easy with the expectation of failure. If we bet on us or our team losing, it’s not only unhealthy, but we might compromise what could have been a success. Besides, we could simply be wrong in betting on failure (and look ridiculous in the end by having done so).

When NOT to Contemplate Failure

As you might expect by now, I’m a bit of a Space Exploration nerd (nut, maybe?). One of my favorite stories was the one of Apollo XIII. To me it shows humankind how innovation can occur in the midst of unexpected crises and trials.?

It was April 11th, 1970, and from Cape Canaveral a rocket takes off to the skies with a crew of three aiming for what would have been a third visit to the moon. But the Apollo XIII mission would be remembered for a series of accidents that went unchained during the second day of the mission. The happening originated the phrase, “Houston, we’ve had a problem”, spoken by Jim Lovell, captain of the mission.?

At that moment, a slew of engineers at the Mission Control Center in Houston, TX start scrambling for answers and eventually, solutions. Heroically, the Flight Director of the Apollo XIII Mission, Gene Kranz (a personal hero, he's the on the picture below), was able to exert one of the best examples of leadership during a crisis in the history of humankind. To him the phrase “Failure is not an option” is attributed to him, and it's also the name of his book and story of the whole ordeal (fascinating stuff, I tell you).

The problem is that those words were never pronounced by him during the crisis response. It did give a catchy title to the fascinating account of the mission, but what Mr. Kranz meant was that at that moment, failure was not being considered in the realm of possibilities that were presented, because everyone was scrambling for solutions. His determination and courageous leadership simply kept everyone on the same page until the crisis passed.

The “not an option”?phrase has generated a romantic point of view regarding problem-solving and leadership. But this phrase is a bit reductionist and might keep us from learning the true lessons. It's most important to highlight the mindset that was present during the time of crisis.

To give you an example of such mindset, I'd like to quote John Aaron (in the picture below), also known as "Steely Eye Missileman" (Don't shoot the messenger, I didn't call him that). He was another engineer in mission control during that mission. He's become a legend in the Apollo XII mission after his keen skill kept the mission going after a lightning strike.

In the movie, "Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo", John points out dramatically that during Apollo XIII, “Failure might not have been an option, but it was there... lurking... almost daring us to make a mistake”.

For that very reason, and because of the very fact that lives were at stake, the mission control team kept plowing through to find cumulative and progressive solutions to finally bring three astronauts home. Notice how implicitly, John had placed failure in a distant place, no matter how menacing it looked. Despite how high the stakes were, that wasn't the time to contemplate failure. Failure had to be present in some part of the mind, but it had to be compartmentalized and kept at a distance to keep it from being a distraction.

Focus on obtaining accurate facts

The ability to remain cool and focused under pressure while there is a looming (or occurring) disaster is one of those heroic attributes we might want to cultivate. One way to do that is by actually focusing on obtaining information, data, and knowledge accurately.

This approach allowed the mission control team to stay on task and perform to the top level. The imperative need was to obtain knowledge, in colloquial words, finding out what in blazing Hades was happening, and then figuring out solutions.

At the beginning of the crisis response phase, Gene Kranz gathered the team and emphatically stated: "Let's work the problem, people. Let's not make things worse by guessing."

One way to focus while obtaining the facts task during crises might be adopting the right narrative. If we visualize ourselves in a timeline it might help us obtain a greater picture of the situation. One way to do that might be adopting mantras that can help us get through the crises and help us maintain the right focus. For example:

"I'll despair later, right now I'm finding the truth."

Or: "The more accurately we get this, the better our team will respond".

Focus on the right variables and the potential solutions

Once we've obtained the right information, we might need to discern between what's actually a crucial variable or a variable with peripheral effects. In 1973, a Lockheed 1011 Jumbo Jet tragically crashed into the Florida Everglades. Dieter Uchtdorf, a retired commercial pilot and religious public speaker describes the situation:

"A curious thing about this accident is that all vital parts and systems of the airplane were functioning perfectly—the plane could have easily landed safely at its destination in Miami, only 20 miles (32km) away. During the final approach, however, the crew noticed that one green light had failed to illuminate—a light that indicates whether or not the nose landing gear has extended successfully.

The pilots discontinued the approach, set the aircraft into a circling holding pattern over the pitch-black Everglades, and turned their attention toward investigating the problem. They became so preoccupied with their search that they failed to realize the plane was gradually descending closer and closer toward the dark swamp below. By the time someone noticed what was happening, it was too late to avoid the disaster."

Focusing on the wrong (and maybe irrelevant) failure might in fact result in tragic consequences during crises. Being focused isn't enough when the stakes are high. We need to have the right focus to overcome failure.

Coming Next week...

We're going to study how failure can have the potential to be re-directed and turned into a success. You don't want to miss it. In the meantime, I invite you to share your thoughts on the comments. Be well.

Gonzalo