Being Courageous … Success Is Not Final, Failure Is Not Fatal

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts — Winston Churchill

In this article, please excuse me for naming people that you have possibly never heard about before, but, to me, it is people who make a difference in leadership roles and not the institution or organisation. In the success of any organisation or team, you need a leadership team which drives forward a core set of beliefs. No organisation or team can ever sit back and rest on their work from the past. A great leadership team often builds a foundation that can be sustained into the future and is not dependent on any of the leaders. If a team just builds on the success of individuals, its success can crumble when it loses that leader. Steve Jobs, for example, built a foundation for Apple that has sustained as a legacy to him — he did this by getting the right leadership team in place, and by instilling core beliefs into the company.

Having courage

Let me quickly outline something as an example. In REF 2014, our research impact case studies in Computer Science and Informatics were graded at 90% 3* (internationally excellent) and 10% at 2*. By REF 2021, all of our research impact case studies were all rated as 4* (world-leading in excellence). For research scores, we had 3% which were 4* in REF 2014 (one in 33 was world-leading), but, by REF 2021, this was 38% (almost 2 in 5 were world-leading).

What happened in between that changed things? Well, we become more gutsy and confident. But, most of all, we became more courageous and did the things we liked doing. Overall, in the time after REF 2014, it was led by a few research leads such as Jessie Kennedy, Emma Hart, David Benyon, Ben Paecher, Hazel Hall, Sally Smith, Ahmed Al-Dubai, and myself. Basically, we had responsibilities and not roles. Our meetings were mainly reporting, and where we just got on with things. And, we stuck to our core beliefs of improving the quality of our research work and in being as inclusive as possible for all our staff.

Overall, I dearly miss my mentor over those years — Prof David Benyon. David was never formally my mentor, but guided me through difficult decisions and was always so positive. He had an academic reputation that could place him in any university in the world, but he wanted to be where he was and had faith in the people around him. He was gentle and caring and had faith in those he worked with. Overall, you can try and teach people to be leaders, but David, to me, was a true leader — and I respected him for that. At his core, though, he was truly humble, and for all the great things he did, he never made anyone feel out of place. In your company, make sure that your less experienced leaders have good mentors — and don’t make it a formal role.

As I look back on the things we have achieved in research and innovation, I am reminded of Winston Churchill‘s famous quote of:

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

This resonates so much with my academic life, and the success that is measured at any point in time is not final. We strive to continue research where you can never stop and say that anything is finished. It is all a work in progress. But, at any point in time, you can measure your success with tangible things: jobs created, company worth, citations, grant income, and so on.

Failure is not fatal

Winston’s quote goes deeper than that, and it is the second part that is just as important … “failure is not fatal”. As every academic knows, you continually face “failure”. You often put your heart and soul into something, but it just bounces back as a rejection. It might be the research grant that you’ve spent weeks and months on, being bounced for little reason, but “there were many other grants, and we could only fund a few”.

But, it is the final part that it is the most important part … “it is the courage to continue that counts.” In virtually everything that we have done that has been successful, it is the courage to sustain things that come to the fore. Without this courage, we would never actually do much in our working lives. We would sit back and not take key decisions. In life, few things are black and white, and you can collect all the data in the world and still not know if you are making the right decision or not.

And, you basically learn nothing from your work if you have not made failures. Every time you fail must lift yourself back. A key part of our success in the transformation of our research was that there was no blame culture. Individuals were not pin-pointed for their non-success, but where the research team took ownership. Not one of the leads, too, shirked their responsibilities.

Gut instinct

In most of the key things that have been successful in our work, we have made decisions from the gut .. and where something either feels right or not. Our spin-outs are some of our greatest successes — and can be measured by tangible things … jobs, sales, patents, and so on. Within these things, it is important to look back on your input into something that has been successful and reflect on what it would be like you if you had not made a fundamental decision. If that something would not even exist now, then you know that you were one of the cogs in the machine that has made something a success.

If you can, define your core beliefs in your work, and make decisions that are consistent with these. No one can ever criticise a decision that is grounded in your beliefs, but they can when you go against these. And try to do things that you love and have a passion for, and once you fulfilled all your dreams, find some more to chase.

So, have courage, be humble, and take on responsibility … and change the world.