I always counsel young people that your career is a marathon, not a sprint. A successful journey is one that is a culmination of many triumphs and failures. Someone once told me that there is something instructive about going out with an idea and getting your ass kicked. By that he meant as long as you learn and improve each time you fail you will be better off in the long run.
Jim Collins, the author and best business practices guru, said during a conference I attended that “the opposite of success is not failure, but growth.” In the moment failure is not fun. Trust me, I know from experience. Having the discipline to reflect and learn from each experience will make you better.
A Nov. 8, 2014, article in The New York Times called “Wearing Your Failure on Your Sleeve” describes how Silicon Valley embraces failure and changed the tone from “failure” to “learn and change.” It also references a one-day conference in San Francisco called FailCon whose purpose is to help attendees learn from those entrepreneurs who flopped.
Once is enough
Evolution Capital Partners, the private equity firm I co-founded in 2005, has made its fair share of mistakes for sure. What we have gotten very good at, however, is not making the same mistake twice. We document everything that we do in a process that we use to guide us in subsequent events. Our process is comprehensive and is derived from failure. Each item in our process is there for a reason and everyone at Evolution embraces and, most importantly, trusts our process.
On a regular basis my colleagues and I convene to adjust and improve our process to make it better and better. It is a living and breathing document. We know that documenting is a business best practice and something we advocate at Evolution. This dedication to best practices, which includes documenting your failures, has led to many successes early in our history and points to a bright future. New additions to the team can quickly get up to speed with what to do by simply adhering to our processes.
Document your failures
Without failure there is no process to document and no opportunity for growth and improvement. To the extent I have had success in my career it is because I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone continuously so that I can make calculated failures and learn from them.
An analogy I heard once was that the only way a tortoise can move forward is to stick its neck out of its shell, putting itself at risk. And we know from the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” that slow and steady is a better way to win a marathon, much like your business career, rather than sprinting forward with blinders on and risk not finishing the race at all.
