Jack Welch, in his book “Straight From The Gut” states, you have to celebrate when someone attempts a major breakthrough and fails. If you don’t celebrate, you are not encouraging risk takers to attempt these major breakthroughs. Two of my favorite Thomas Edison’s quotes: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” and “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Recently I heard a young lady being interviewed on a major Chicago radio station and she was asked the secret to her success. She stated that every week her father asked her what she failed at during the week. She was not learning how to fail but learning how far she could go.
As a business owner, I also need to celebrate not only my staff’s failures and successes, but also my own. Recently I had an article I was working on for The Rotarian magazine. I sat on that article for 4 months going over it several times instead of taking the risk of either someone reviewing it or submitting it because I was unsure if it was ready. I also have implemented inter office weekly meetings. This helps us as a group to keep moving things forward such as a project or a lead. More importantly we, as an organization, discover together what we learned for the week and what we can help each other achieve.
I was once at a meeting of volunteers and heard one of the leaders boasting that he had achieved all of his goals for the year and yet we were just starting the second quarter. I just thought to myself how disappointing that the goals were set so low and already achieved.
Does your company just reward the people who play it safe? How does your company celebrate failure?
-Michael Ericksen
WAC Solution Partners- Midwest
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