Why fear failure?

No one likes to admit failure. That is something I find ironic because not only is failure a fact of life, in some aspects it is a cathartic action which allows for self examination and for the best to be made of a bad situation. Sadly, due to the mismanagement and in incompetence of many leaders and CEO's failure is seen as something terrible but irrational risk is not. Now that is a truly head spinning contradiction one could only suspect coming out of Lewis Carroll.

That being said, there is a point where despite all one's best efforts and every possible positive step taken, a certain product or initiative is just not working and needs to be killed. Now current corporate dogma says avoid blame and find someone to pin it on. Sadly, very little time is spent saying what did we do wrong and even more important, what did we do right? Failure unto itself is often a tremendous learning experience and something that, in the long term, can benefit the organization.

Now this is not an ode to the glories of failure. It goes without saying that an organization needs to succeed much more than fail in order to achieve its goals. However the path to success often comes from what at first glance seems a failure. Think of it this way, were it not for a failure, we would not have antibiotics or the microwave oven or teflon. In many regards, failure can be the first step on a different path to success. The irrational fear of failing is indicative of a short term viewpoint which says that only immediate and unquestioned, chest thumping success is appropriate. Sadly, that means that even a success which is 90 percent of the goals expected is often seen as a failure.

In order to succeed one can not fear failure. There is no need to aim for failure of course, nor should one just shrug your shoulders and say "oh well I have tried my best." But inversely, failure should be seen as an opportunity for self examination and quite possibly for the chance to create future opportunities down the road which will far and away dwarf the failure you have just completed.