- h6. Notes toward a Theory of Failure (or is it a Theory of Success?):
- # To succeed, you have to try more stuff than the other guy—fast.
- # If you try more stuff in a hurry, you’ll make lots of mistakes. (It’s an Iron Law of Nature.)
- # Hence, screwing up a lot is a very good sign of progress—perhaps the only sure sign.
- # If we aim to (more or less) maximize screw-ups, then we must do more than “tolerate” screw-ups.
- # We must “encourage” screw-ups.
- # We must CEL-E-BRATE screw-ups!
- 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:
- {tip}“REWARD EXCELLENT FAILURES.
- PUNISH MEDIOCRE SUCCESSES.”{tip}
- 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.
- As Les Wexner, founder of Limited Brands, once told me:
- “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.”
- Amen.
- “FAIL-SAFE” WISDOM
- {quote}“Fail. Forward. Fast.”
- —High-tech exec, Valley Forge, PA {quote}
- {quote}“Fail faster. Succeed sooner.”
- —David Kelley, founder IDEO{quote}
- {quote}“Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”
- —Samuel Beckett, Nobel laureate, Literature{quote}
- {quote}“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
- —Winston Churchill{quote}
- {quote}Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
- —Book title, Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes{quote}
- {quote}“Sam was not afraid to fail.”
- —David Glass, former CEO, Walmart, on Walmart founder Sam Walton’s most significant success trait{quote}
- {quote}“If people ... tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain.”
- —Michael Bloomberg{quote}
- {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.”
- —Michael Jordan{quote}
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- COPYRIGHT
- The Little Big Things by Tom Peters by Tom Peters. Copyright 2010 by Thomas J. Peters.
- All Rights Reserved. Sharing is permitted--forward to a friend!