There I was hanging with my friend, let’s call him Bruce, drinking a beer, while his 2 year-old daughter was running around the living room.
My friend’s home was an engineer’s dream, including his coffee table he made himself — full of widgets, gadgets and gear-like do-nothings for his daughter and any fidgeter to play with while engaging in conversation.
That’s when his daughter took off running, tripped and bumped her head with a decent thud on the corner of the table. She immediately took a tumble and started to let out a cry. I reacted fast, but he was calm. He smiled and just said, “relax.”
He reached over, picked her up and leaned her on the table exactly where she hit her head. He then said, “Now, watch. Let’s see what she learns.”
She slowly started to calm down, and put her little fingers on the corner of the table to feel exactly where she bumped her head. He looked at me and then looked at her and said, “Yea, you got it! That’s hard, made of wood and metal. It hurts if you run into it.”
She looked at him and gave him a nod, and then waddled-ran off into the other room. He looked over to me and chuckled, “Well, she won’t do that again.”
In that moment I learned a really powerful life lesson…
Failure Specialist
My friend Bruce used to be a high-up military operations specialist. In fact, he told me his title was “Systems Failure Specialist.”
Essentially, people in the military brought him hardware and software and his job was to make it fail. Basically, test it, hack it, or push its performance to the point of failure. His job was to find all the failures in a system, and then document and report those failures so the system could be improved.
Once the system was improved, they would do it over and over again. Essentially, creating antifragile design over-time through a series of failures, iterative learnings, and improvements.
He simply called it — “Finding the +1.”
While working on the systems, he would discover small issues that he could exploit and turn into big problems. Causing it to crash, be vulnerable, breakdown, or leak sensitive information.
In the process he would try to find the +1 — the simple and small improvement that he could discover that ultimately made a big difference in upgrading the system. His specialty wasn’t just pushing systems to failure, it was extracting the learning of the failure and being able to relay that back into the design and improvement process.
On Fear & Failure
From years of coaching people, working in fast-paced start-ups, one thing I’ve seen over-time is the relationship of failure, for individuals and within organizations, and the rate of growth.
“Fail fast,” is a Silicon Valley term which has made its way into the self-improvement and leadership world. By giving yourself or your organization the permission to fail fast, you can learn quickly from mistakes and grow.
I used to be incredibly afraid to fail. Rooted in approval-seeking from authority figures, I never wanted to get things wrong.
But over time, I’ve learned a quote I live by, “It’s not about being right, it’s about getting it right.” And that, my friends, requires a willingness to fail.
I think it’s equally important to understand the root of your fear of failure, as it is to give yourself the opportunity to fail consistently.
One night, while blisteringly high, Bruce handed me a guitar while our friends were playing in the music studio in his basement. Guitar has never been my thing, and I recoiled in fear, saying, “But I don’t know how to play guitar!”
From a place of pure wisdom he said, “Well, why don’t you just try to make as many mistakes as possible?”
My mind was blown. I was set free and I just started playing. I’m sure it was not great, but it was fun, and I was free. Whenever I get stuck with something, this is the ultimate permission slip — start by making as many mistakes as possible, get that out of the way, and then everything after that is a constant improvement.
The Root of Fear of Failure, Perfectionism & Growth
When you think of failure, what emotions arise?
Due to the rise of social media, our lives being on display, public outrage and ridicule, we’re more afraid to fail than ever. It’s no longer just what my parents and friends will think, it’s what will everyone think?
We’re so afraid to fail, we don’t start. If we start, we don’t finish.
Brene Brown says that based on her research perfectionism is often rooted in shame. That we’re afraid to feel the shame of not being perfect. But perfect doesn’t exist — it’s subjective and unrealistic. There is no shame in failing, that is, if you learn from your failures.
Let’s neutralize and normalize failure. It’s simply an input we can utilize to learn. It’s our +1 of the system of our creative process, our thoughts or our actions. If you don’t push yourself and reach a point of failure — whether creatively or in the gym — you don’t grow.
Ultimately, you have to decide if you would rather not grow or fail. It’s your choice — get clear on your values. Failures emerge in the void between what you know and what you don’t know — however this is also where emergence and innovation occurs. The greatest artists, composers and engineers of our time tried new things, risked failure, and made fantastic discoveries.
It takes courage. It also takes removing the voices, whoever they may be from your head, and committing the process, failing and learning.
Benoit Mandelbrot & Iterative Equations
I’m going to deviate for a second, but stick with me, as we’ll make it back around..
In the 1960s Benoit Mandelbrot, a Polish mathematician, was fascinated by the irregular shapes he observed in nature such as coastlines, clouds, and trees. He became interested in the idea of measuring and understanding the complexity of these shapes.
He began to develop a new mathematical concept that could account for the irregularity and complexity he saw in nature and in the stock market. He called this concept “fractals,” derived from the Latin word “fractus,” which means broken or fragmented.
Mandelbrot realized that these shapes could be described mathematically using a simple equation that could generate an infinite variety of complex and irregular patterns.
Fractals are created and calculated using iterative equations, which are used to generate complex and irregular patterns that exhibit self-similarity and have the same structure at different scales.
Iterative equations involve repeatedly applying the same formula to an initial value, and then using the output as the new input for the next iteration. The process is then repeated over and over, with each iteration generating a new output that depends on the previous output.
Simply put, once the equation runs, whatever it equals goes right back into the equation in an infinite loop. The constant in the equation is known as the “growth rate.”
The Growth Rate
As systems evolve, they naturally iterate. The +1 is discovered and fed back into the system, so the system can be improved.
This happens with our immune systems when we get sick, and our bodies learn from the illness and our immune system improves.
This happens in nature where trees adapt based on the changes in the climate or in response to pests, and they become more antifragile overtime.
This happens in our creative process or in our organizations, when we give ourselves permission to failure, and thus improve creatively.
This happens when you play chess, make a mistake, and learn not to make the same mistake again.
The speed that we’re willing to fail, learn and implement the learning is the growth rate of ourselves or our organizations.
Machine Learning & AI
Want to know why AI is progressing so rapidly? Well, let’s take ChatGPT, the fastest growing consumer product of all time. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using ChatGPT, asking it questions and giving it feedback on its responses. It’s the greatest experiment in advanced reinforcement, machine learning ever undertaken.
Every one using ChatGPT is helping it discover +1 improvements constantly, and it’s learning on the fly. It has no emotions, it’s not afraid to fail. All input and feedback is learning.
Now, humans are not capable of this kind of rapid learning, nor do we have that kind of focused input on our developmental process, but we can see that if we compile what we know and are willing to iterate constantly, we can rapidly increase our own growth rate.
In Conclusion
All input is learning. All output creates the opportunity for more input. If we’re lucky enough in the process, we’ll fail, and we’ll learn.
This is the natural way. It’s mathematic, it’s elegant and it’s beautiful. Create a culture in your life and organizations which embraces failure, and you’ll increase the likelihood you’ll succeed, and the rate at which you’ll get there.
You learn less from your successes than your failures. But if you learn from your failures, you’ll create much more success.
