Try a Little Failureness

My very-nearly-8-year-old son, Hudson, is really into skateboarding these days. In tagging along with him to skateparks, I’ve come to marvel at a few core aspects of the whole undertaking. For one, skateboarding is a failure sport. It goes something like this: fall, fall, fall BIG, fall again, and then maybe you manage to land it… before you go on and fall once more for good measure. All of this, for just for one trick.

This cycle goes on and on and on — two weeks can be spent working on a single trick, a certain ramp, or just making it through a stretch of skating without a wipeout. The perseverance skateboarding demands is amazing — the ‘try try try’-ness of it all.

Then, giving color to the whole thing is a diverse group of kids and kid-like adults, a community bonded by their shared pursuit and passion. Everyone on a skateboard shares a fundamental love of trying something constantly challenging. Everyone is similarly unfazed in the face of repeated failure. I suspect that because of this, the community is unbelievably supportive. Across age, skill, and experience, skateboarders encourage each other to “drop in,” clap when someone does something amazing — and say “next time, man” when it doesn’t quite work out.

Everyone at a skatepark is looking to make the great trick, ollie, or ramp. But through that effort, they seem to have figured out that they can be great, but so too can others. It is not mutually exclusive. It’s never “when you win, I fail.”

What a concept, right?

Of course, as a business owner, entrepreneur, manager, boss, and idealist, I can’t help but observe this behavior and wonder what would happen if businesses and brands were run this way. After all, isn’t this what entrepreneurs do? Keep trying until you find one trick that works? So much of business is fail, fail, fail, fail. The most persistent, driven, and dedicated are often the people who stick the landing.

What if we had a community like this? Do we already? Is it Silicon Valley? Silicon Beach? Ted Talks? Google? How do we create more of these types of environments and emulate this type of spirit in our businesses, communities, teams, and relationships?

Digging in a bit deeper, here are some amazing nuggets about failure I came across and want to share:

• Failure is an absolute must for growth. You can’t have one without the other. Plus, research shows that talking about failure makes for happier and more productive workers, so there’s that. Here’s how to use failure as a learning opportunity.
• Managing failure — easier said than done, y’all. Yes, we all say we want to make space for it in our cultures and as managers, but HOW do we do that? A real roadmap of how to get there — and a super helpful place to start.
• Decision paralysis. To me, this is the worst byproduct of fearing failure. It is better to be DONE, than it is to be held hostage in PERFECTION PARALYSIS. Words we live by at IN GOOD CO, and a culture we work to actively cultivate. We expect and welcome failure as long as we are learning from it, moving on and PUSHING every day.
• “You learn much more from failure than success.” Annoying to admit, but true. So, if we really believe it, let’s walk the walk —let’s write our own “failure resumes.” This exercise is also a great way to check in with yourself each year, own your missteps, and acknowledge the lessons and opportunities produced by them.
• Trust the process. For a mega dose of inspiration, here’s 25 incredible women who achieved success later in life. I am pretty damn sure they learned some lessons and are all beyond proud and comfortable with their success BECAUSE of what they went through and learned from along the way.

Last week, I went with my son to the Venice Beach skatepark (confession: at the time, I may or may not have been procrastinating the writing of this article — something about the fear of failure, no doubt). About 40 minutes in, my son had a hard collision with another skater twice his size that scared the bejesus out of me. Lying on the emptied out pool floor, within moments he was being hoisted up and out of the pool by fellow skaters. After some tears, deep breaths, and a huge hug, the other kids welcomed Hudson back into the park. He dropped in, perhaps a touch more cautious than before, but still, off he went.

Fall off the bike and get back on. Off the horse and keep riding. Take a moment, lick your wounds, learn from it — but keep moving forward! It’s a simple thing, really — yet no less difficult and awe-inspiring. In the end, I suspect it’s all that falling down that makes the landing feel so good.

What’s your relationship with failure? Find us @instagoodcompany or on LinkedIn to continue the conversation, or keep reading and let us know what you think. IN GOOD CO is a culture-conscious brand consultancy championing passion and purpose.