How to handle failure...

I am currently in the process of expanding my comfort zone by taking part in an improvisation acting course. I have never done anything like this before and even as I took part in the first session I could sense myself saying "what the hell am I doing". However what made it a whole lot easier was the teacher setting a frame around the whole experience by saying failure is expected and learning could not possibly take place without us failing frequently throughout the course.

This attitude was similar to what I saw when I watched a documentary on the art of stand-up comedy. Before a comic begins their tour they will play to a small audience and 'test out' their new routine before they unleash it on a bigger audience. The intent behind this is to find out what jokes do well and more importantly which ones bomb, not so they can descend into an orgy of drugs and depression, but so they can tweak or discard completely the joke before it really matters.

It is amazing that, as humans, we have such an adverse reaction to the notion of failure. One possible reason is we place so much of an emotional stack on the outcome, when we fail on the process, our outcome starts to feel further away. Bill Gates once said we overestimate what we can do in a week and underestimate what we can do in a year. Whilst we are all highly ambitious business people, it wouldn't be hard to find someone who stops after the first part of that statement; after overestimating our capabilities, we decide it wasn't meant to be and focus our efforts elsewhere.

Tim Harford in his book Adapt argues that the key to success is not to be headstrong towards a chosen path, despite all signs suggesting it's a sinking ship. Tim suggests the real key to success is to a continual process of trial and error until you reach your outcome. It is the ability to adapt to failure that promotes longevity in business rather than spending time justifying your actions that have caused you to fail.

So how could you learn to handle failure so it's a blip rather than game over?


The moment you accept failure is the moment you can do something about it. It is when you bury your head in the sand and continue down the doomed path that problems mount that become too big to resolve. There were plenty of signs the model that Lehman Brothers were following was flawed, however when it was accepted the problem was too big to solve. To accept failure is to let go of ego (especially if it was your idea that failed) and understand this failure is not going to define you, it is part of the process.


I remember reading that whenever Jennifer Aniston experiences a break up or a bad movie she allows herself 24hrs to whine and feel sorry for herself. After 24 hours she doesn't revisit that negative emotion again. This is an important aspect of handling failure; having a coping mechanism in place that allows you the time to experience the inevitable emotion of disappointment, but then lets you move on to the process of tweaking your approach.

Where is the learning

If you failed, something happened. You had a plan and it didn't go according to the plan. What was it? Plane crashes are very rare; there is more chance of having an accident crossing the road than a plane crash. However when there is a crash, they don't say 'well it doesn't happen all the time does it'. No, No, they investigate what happened so they are able to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.

What did you learn from the failure? What needs to be altered and reassessed so this situation doesn't happen again? This stage is best done 'when the dust has settled' and you have had your 24 hours of despair.

Failure doesn't have to mean give up; it just means something happened and the decision to give up completely is one that cannot be taken lightly when you are in business or even when learning a new skill.