Saad Gul
Start-ups in Silicon Valley don’t launch after completing extensive business plans, conducting market research or manufacturing ready to ship products. Instead they release their ‘Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP), which is a simple version of the product or service with a few core features.
Immediate feedback is almost instantly guaranteed with this method. The idea is – in case the response is poor – to fail cheaply and quickly. This allows for instantaneous learning and scrapping ideas that people don’t want. Instead work can be started on the next project – something that the market does want. This counterintuitive approach – where failure is a built in feature – is what allows businesses to disrupt industries.
If we’re striving for innovation, growth and improvement, failure can be an attractive feature. It can become a stepping stone for success. Most successes are preceded by failure. In absence of humility, this uncommon perspective can not be cultivated: there is nothing shameful about being wrong. It is, in fact, a super power to be able to put the ego aside to change course. When you focus on what you’d prefer to be true, you miss what is true. Being able to alter perspective is a strength, not a weakness. Each time failure occurs, new data is available. Alternative options emerge.
Fear reflected in archaic traditional models of business where companies would produce goods based on primary and secondary market research and then ship them out to the market. This process – which was cocooned from feedback – made it difficult to measure what caused success or failure. Contrarily, the MVP model allows to accurately measure what’s working and what’s not because it embraces failure. This allows startups to keep reinventing themselves.
Similarly, as people increasingly choose self-employment, it can be useful to draw some lessons from startups. As responsible CEO’s of our own lives, which model might we apply to ourselves? The obsolete model that rejects fear or the MVP model that isn’t afraid to experiment or tackle new problems head on?
Conditioning by society, friends, teachers, college, parents and the media can really block us from viewing failure, setbacks and adversity as stepping stones for growth and opportunities to learn. Instead we avoid it or are ashamed by it. But remaining stuck in this story can reenforce victim mentality – it can stunt growth.
The right thing to do is to assume total responsibility. With conscious thought and deliberate practice it is possible to rewire the brain to believe that failure and success are two sides of the same coin. As Ryan Holiday reminds us in his book The Obstacle is the Way, “Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs.”
Redefining our relationship with failure – on the path to success – gives us the strength to continue and increases our tolerance to fail. Taking any other view can be futile. Successful people understand this so well that whenever they’re not failing, they know they’re doing something wrong.
Entrepreneurs simply refuse to give up when the going gets tough. Athletes choose endurance over enthusiasm. The common pattern here is that overnight success is an illusion. Success comes after accruing incremental gains that are stacked consistently on a very long timeline.
Five years before publishing Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling – who was struggling as a single mother – was living on welfare. Having had her manuscript rejected a dozen times, she didn’t give up. Eventually, with over 450 million books sold in the Harry Potter series, she made it.
Similarly, Ariana Huffington, who began her career as a writer – and is now the president of The Huffington Post – had her second book rejected thirty six times. Criticised and dissuaded when she set out to create an online magazine, she refused to take no for an answer. She persisted and eventually sold The Huffington Post for $315 million in 2011.
Failure is only fatal when we don’t learn from it. We will inevitably be faced with adversity, hardship, pain, stress and rejection – from relationships, to careers, health and financial challenges. It’s really up to us whether in those moments we’re willing to pause and reflect instead of being egotistical. When you find yourself failing, ask: What can I learn from this? What is this trying to teach me? Is there a task here that I’m avoiding? Is this an opportunity to improve? Is it time to let go of beliefs or values that are no longer helping me grow?
