Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Failing Forward

If you try, you'll make mistakes.  If you don't try, you'll really be making a mistake.  Anyone who has ever tried has failed.  But anyone who has ever failed eventually enjoys the victory of rising above their failure.


If I'm going to fail...at least let me fail in the forward motion.

  1. Good leaders make mistakes; bad ones repeat them.
  2. Admit your mistakes and apologize if appropriate.
  3. Show no fear.  Turn up your energy level!
  4. Find out what went wrong so you can prevent it from happening again.
  5. Correct what went wrong immediately.  Deal with the problem.
  6. Follow up, check up and test to see how you're doing in correcting the mistake.  Don't let the mistake happen again.
  7. Most every mistake has a point at which you can turn it around if you're paying attention and willing to do something about it.
The mistakes we can't afford to make are being invisible, arrogant, insensitive to others, solely money motivated, a bad role model or phony. 

The good news about making a famous flop is that it will keep you from becoming arrogant.  Arrogance is what invites really big mistakes to be made.

If you can't deal with failure, you can't win.  For all their down side, the upside of errors is that they provide you information and opportunity for growth.

The good thing about mistakes is that no one will be jealous of you.  Don't get me wrong, failure isn't something we should strive for.  What we learn from setbacks is to not repeat them.

If the mistake is that you lied, refused correction or tried to cover your tracks, well...you have a bigger issue than can be addressed here.