Failure to Allow Failure

What do stand-up comics, inventors, and entrepreneurs have in common?  (I promise you this is not the set-up to a bad joke.)  In all three cases, success comes after a long and iterative process involving many failures.  I promise you every great joke you heard on a Netflix special has first been tested hundreds of times in comedy clubs, during which it went from incomprehensible to terrible to bad to mediocre to passable to decent to quite good, before becoming gold.  Same with inventors using science to discover something game-changing, and same with entrepreneurs prototyping their product or service towards market acceptance.

Indeed, every successful person in any industry can tell you that they had their share of failures, which should tell you that no one can succeed without failing.  They can also tell you that many if not all of those failures were gateways to and not diversions from their path to success, which should tell you that failure is a feature and not a bug in the quest for success.




Alas, how much failure do we tolerate, from ourselves or from others?  My wife once had a student who she was showing a complex procedure to, and when the student was struggling assured him that "no one gets this right the first time."  To which he replied, without a trace of arrogance, "but I've never failed at anything in my life."  Which I interpreted as, first his parents and then himself, whenever he encountered anything he couldn't master right away, he pivoted to something else.  He had never had the experience of doing something bad long enough that he could learn how to do it good.

Or, how often does a stray comment on social media get "ratio'ed," which is to say flamed by many more condemning replies than likes?  If I were to post 10 things today and one of them were off, that would be the post everyone would remember, even to the point of getting "cancelled," which is not just that that one bad post would be flamed but that I would never be heard from again because I would be deemed as not having anything of worth to contribute given that one bad post.

To be sure, some failures have consequences.  If you fail in accounting or law or management, people can lose their livelihood.  If you fail in health or government or construction, people can die.  If you are careless with your words, people can be wounded, and that pain is real too.

But go back to my examples at the beginning.  Comics test material, audiences groan, comics improve it for next time.  Inventors plan it out, try it out, make observations, and make adjustments.  Entrepreneurs prototype, get feedback, invest more resources, and do it all again.  Along the way, costs are borne, time is spent, and egos are bruised.  Are we willing to allow that to happen to ourselves?  Will we be kind to others who are willing to walk that path?

No progress was ever made without taking a first step and then many more after.  And nothing meaningful was ever done that didn't involve lots of failure, lots of opposition, and lots of costs.

Social media has enriched our lives immeasurably and connected us in ways our great-great-grandparents would not have been able to imagine.   But it has also given us images of unrealistic standards, shown us the end product without all the sweat that went into it, and provided us a platform to pile on anyone who dares make a mistake in public.

Where does that leave us as a society?  Are we still willing to risk and fail and bleed and try again?  Or are we going to be cowed into timidity and mediocrity and agreeableness?  I for one believe we have committed a deep failure in not allowing failure, the consequences of which will be hard to fathom, because you can't measure what you're missing when that great joke, that world-changing scientific discovery, that successful business isn't allowed to come into existence.