I
was spoiled early in my ministry by a supervisor who accepted failure as part
of the learning process. I was sharing with him some of the things that I had
tried that did not work and he responded, “Keep on trying until you find out
what works.”
We experience
failure in life. We fail in
relationships, in projects, in achieving goals, and many other ways too
numerous to count. Not to recognize our failures
is a failure in itself! The only way to
avoid failure is to do nothing. The key to
moving forward is deciding what we will do with failure. There are several possibilities.
First,
we can ignore failure. We can go
blithely on our way. In so doing, we
learn nothing and keep repeating the same mistakes with the same results. As someone said, “Practice does not make
perfect. PERFECT practice makes perfect.”
Second, we can sweep our failure under the rug and hope no one notices. How many products have you seen that simply disappeared from the shelves without explanation? In this situation, no one wants to accept responsibility for failure. For those of a certain generation, consider the Edsel, for example.
Third,
we can learn from our failure. After
evaluating what happened, we have several alternatives. As due consideration, we can just drop the
idea as unworkable, unrealistic, or just inappropriate. Maybe it is just the wrong time, the wrong
place, or the wrong people. Another
alternative is to take time to evaluate what happened—both good and bad—and redesign
or change the project/product/event. A
few tweaks may be all we need. Finally,
we can come up with an alternative that seeks to avoid what was wrong with the
original.
Key
to learning from our failures is worthwhile information and comprehensive evaluation. This involves measures of both quantity and
quality. We can look at numbers—attendance,
for example—or response. What was the
take away for those who attended? Were
lives changed? Did you get what you
expected? Since we are often too close
to be objective, drawing in others to help us evaluate a project or event is
important.
Thomas Edison is reported to have said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that
won't work.” It is not wrong
to fail, but it is wrong not to try.
Where have you failed recently?
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