Being okay with failure is counterintuitive for most people. It’s one thing to accept failures, but another to not worry about failing at all. But if you listen to CEOs of some of the most successful companies in the world, failing is no big deal. In fact, it helps.
Fear of failure is normal, and most people take the path of least resistance to avoid failing. But when James Quincey first became chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Company he told managers, “If we are not making mistakes, we aren’t working hard enough.” Quincey believes Coke employees have been scared to fail since the “New Coke” disaster years ago. And fear of failure stifles the good and even great ideas along with the bad ideas.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has the same attitude toward failure as Quincey has. Big ideas are experiments and experiments have unknown outcomes. But that’s OK, says Bezos. “Experiments are, by their very nature, prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work.”
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings is concerned that there hasn’t been enough failure at Netflix. He’s worried that the company has too many hit shows and not enough canceled shows, which means they aren’t taking as many risks as they should be. If employees were executing bold and creative ideas, they would have a bigger fail rate.
CEOs aren’t the only ones who think that failure is worth it. Smith College in Massachusetts offers a course called “Failing Well.” (Don’t count on many of those classes, kids.) Students enrolled in the class are given a Certificate of Failure that says they are “hereby authorized to screw up, bomb, or fail” at a relationship, project, test, or any other initiative that seems hugely important and still be a totally worthy, utterly excellent human being.” Rachel Simmons, who runs the initiative, explains that students who have permission to fail are ready to handle it and that makes them tougher and more likely to take risks.
The result of failing is good, even vital, to business and life. As a business leader, don’t be afraid to embrace the possibility of failure. Learn from it, build upon it, and achievement will come. After all, it took Thomas Edison over 1,000 experiments to finally get the light bulb right. Why be afraid to fail at least a few times?