From Idiotic Hummingbird, 13 Years ago, written in Plain Text.
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  1. h6. Notes toward a Theory of Failure (or is it a Theory of Success?):
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  3. # To succeed, you have to try more stuff than the other guy—fast.
  4. # If you try more stuff in a hurry, you’ll make lots of mistakes. (It’s an Iron Law of Nature.)
  5. # Hence, screwing up a lot is a very good sign of progress—perhaps the only sure sign.
  6. # If we aim to (more or less) maximize screw-ups, then we must do more than “tolerate” screw-ups.
  7. # We must “encourage” screw-ups.
  8. # We must CEL-E-BRATE screw-ups!
  9.  
  10. A (BRILLIANT) variation on this theme comes from successful Australian businessman Phil Daniels, who attributes a large share of his success “to six words.” Namely:
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  12. {tip}“REWARD EXCELLENT FAILURES.
  13. PUNISH MEDIOCRE SUCCESSES.”{tip}
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  15. Those words belong in my “Top Five Quotes” club (from among perhaps 5,000). I believe the idea is profound, and the impact enormous ... IF ... you use a literal translation. That is, if you literally ... REWARD ... excellent failures. And if you literally ... PUNISH ... mediocre successes.
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  17. As Les Wexner, founder of Limited Brands, once told me:
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  19. “In fashion, your batting average is never anywhere near 1.000. Your strikeouts will always, over time, surpass your hits—especially your home runs. So a buyer with no mistakes is taking no chances—the kiss of death in this business; and cause for a poor evaluation. The buyer who will hit home runs, like power hitters in baseball, will also have a bushel of swinging strikeouts. I will in fact reward those swinging strikeouts—as the price of the home runs that are required for our growth.”
  20.  
  21. Amen.
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  23. “FAIL-SAFE” WISDOM
  24.  
  25. {quote}“Fail. Forward. Fast.”
  26. —High-tech exec, Valley Forge, PA {quote}
  27.  
  28. {quote}“Fail faster. Succeed sooner.”
  29. —David Kelley, founder IDEO{quote}
  30.  
  31. {quote}“Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”
  32. —Samuel Beckett, Nobel laureate, Literature{quote}
  33.  
  34. {quote}“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
  35. —Winston Churchill{quote}
  36.  
  37. {quote}Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
  38. —Book title, Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes{quote}
  39.  
  40. {quote}“Sam was not afraid to fail.”
  41. —David Glass, former CEO, Walmart, on Walmart founder Sam Walton’s most significant success trait{quote}
  42.  
  43. {quote}“If people ... tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain.”
  44. —Michael Bloomberg{quote}
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  46. {quote}“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
  47. —Michael Jordan{quote}
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  51.  
  52. via http://www.dailylit.com/books/little-big-things-by-tom-peters
  53.  
  54. COPYRIGHT
  55. The Little Big Things by Tom Peters by Tom Peters. Copyright 2010 by Thomas J. Peters.
  56. All Rights Reserved. Sharing is permitted--forward to a friend!