Failure is not optional

A good friend of mine has this as part of his ethos for his team.  When I first read it I thought…”Wow, this guy is hard core…sounds like a general leading his troops to a seemingly hopeless battle.”  But then I heard the meaning behind it…..we need to fail.  In so many of our teams, organizations, churches and companies failure is frowned upon.  IF (big IF) we try a new idea and it fails, we either cover it up or we blame someone else….a co-worker, people’s hard hearts, Satan….why….because we were created to succeed….failing is bad.  But they’re wrong….

Seth Godin says it well, “The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.”  Companies, churches, teams that play it safe…rarely do much.  Sure they may maintain…and sure they may succeed at being successful at mediocrity….but they don’t really succeed.  A key part of success is failure.  I’ve always heard….”If satan isn’t giving you a hard time then you’re not doing much for the Kingdom of God.”  I would also say….”If you’re not failing, you’re not doing anything worth noticing.”

Do you want to play it safe and maintain your job…the status quo?  Or do you want to risk it all, possibly fail…possibly lose your job, company, team…but possibly change the world?

As I look at stepping back into leadership within my organization one of the things I’ll want to hear about is the failures.  Don’t give me the puffed up, often exaggerated success stories…but tell me about the failures….tell me about the crazy ideas you’re tried that didn’t work…we’ll laugh about them…learn from them…and sit anxiously by knowing that with every failure we’re one step closer to the success.