The Need for and Value of Failure
Why billionaire businessman, inventor and designer James Dyson believes that failure isn't appreciated and valued for what it offers
Failure can get emotionally, psychologically heavy the longer it continues and can break the human spirit. It’s not welcomed, long term at least or well endured and recognized for what it usually is, a process and requirement. One success story says knowing what unsuccessful attempts can do for our brain could help us achieve more.
“Failure is so much more interesting than success. And it always saddens me that school doesn’t really teach that,” James Dyson said in an interview.
The inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner and the business magnate who founded the Dyson company, knows of what he speaks.
“At school and university, the thing is to be brilliant and get the answer right the first time. And there are brilliant people who can do that but for the rest of us, we’re not brilliant,” Dyson added.
That’s why patience, curiosity, persistence and problem solving matter so much.
“And to get there (brilliance) we have to strive and we have to go through failure. And we realize, you don’t get it right the first time. You don’t get it right the second time.
“In my case — and I counted it, it’s 5,127 times,” Dyson said.
That’s a lot to ask everyone because not every person has that much time or support to succeed in what is expected of us. His point, however, remains useful for everyday situations, especially for longer-term projects.
“Failure, you question it: ‘Well, why did it go wrong?’ And actually the reason that it goes wrong is often very, very interesting,” Dyson stressed. “While, if something works, you say, ‘Great, that worked.’ You don’t even stop to wonder why it worked.”
All this, he said, to get to his primary advice:
“So, you’ve got to enjoy failure.”
There is agreement with what Dyson asserted.
“Some of my most important lessons in life, both as a scientist and as a human being, were through failure,” says Bryan Quoc Le, PhD and founder and CEO at Mendocino Food Consulting.
“Failure, especially spectacular failure that crushes you and brings you to rock bottom, forces us to reflect and question everything — values, priorities, ways of thinking, perspectives,” he adds.
“It’s not just about solving a problem and moving on. It’s about your way of being and how you show up in the world.”
There is, however, some pushback on Dyson’s philosophy that you have to enjoy struggling to move incrementally closer to breakthrough.
“Failure is never interesting; it is messy, scary and mentally draining,” argues Anton Guinea, at the Guinea Group of Companies. “If failure was interesting, less people would be afraid to try new things and to put themselves out there.”
Yet, he does see the value in it, as Dyson does.
“Failure is much more demanding than success, so much more educational, because we have time to get out of rumination, through reflection and into reframing. Failure is where you learn,” Guinea says.
Being perceptive to ask and answer certain questions is a necessary developed skill.
“What did I learn, that I will never repeat again, or what did I learn to help me in a situation like that again,” Guinea proposes asking.
“We all know that you can go one of two ways after major failures in life — post traumatic stress or post traumatic growth,” he adds.
“If you learn something after failures, you will be better placed to experience more growth because of them.”
Questioning oneself, as Dyson mentioned, about the why of a failed attempt to learn something interesting is a valuable step for the benefits it provides to thinking processes, emotional states, problem-solving approaches and outcomes.
“Our minds are fluid when challenged. If we are always getting the right answer, which strongly depends on the question at hand, our minds can get into a rut,” Le warns.
“We find that our problem solving skills begin to atrophy and real life offers us challenges well beyond cognitive or intellectual.”
Breaking away from failure requires deeper depths of cognitive processing, understanding and perseverance.
“True challenge requires the full gamut of the brain connected to the heart, connected to the gut,” Le proposes. “(The) intellectual joins with compassion and intuition to find solutions that not only solve the problem but recognizes the conditions that give rise to it and can search intuitively for what works best for a scenario.”
There is often value that isn’t considered in such difficult, fruitless attempts.
“Failure is much more than an invitation to question,” says Lincoln Stoller, PhD and the principal at Mind Strength Balance. “It’s an invitation to building confidence, resilience and insight into the object, subject and method.”
It’s is a starting point for improvement and wisdom.
“The most important learning is where there is the least knowledge or the most-flawed knowledge,” Stoller says. “In an expanding world, that is along the whole boundary. This is why learning is so relevant today and why our failures to understand learning have become more dangerous.”
Guinea brings reflection back up to elaborate on its importance.
“Psychology says that if we don't, we stay stuck in a negative mindset of why — ‘why did I do this or why did I do that?’ When you look back on a failure with curiosity and from a learning perspective, you will do so with a more open mind,” he explains.
Someone can learn what they may not have believed was a possible variable.
“Things go wrong for a myriad of reasons and there is a really good way to look back at failures and that way is the 3E process,” Guinea says.
“This process is about the experience itself: ‘what happened, why it happened, why was it 'interesting?’
“Then there is the evaluation element, which is about moving forward. ‘What did I learn, what will I do differently and what do I need to change or be prepared for?’”
He adds added emphasis on the next part of the process: Explaining.
“I don't think you have fully processed a failure until you can get to the point where you can explain it in a way that helps others avoid a similar experience,” Guinea says.
“That is where the power of failure is — when you can help others learn from your experience, not just learn from it yourself.”
Valuing failure is important in more than just inventing.
Fatigue, frustration, discouragement, anger and depression are natural, yet continuing the course and persevering with adjustments, could be powerful in situations more than one may believe.
Dyson, again: “So, you’ve got to enjoy failure.”
We have different personalities, tolerance levels and temperaments, yet there are helpful ways for learning to “enjoy” the process for what it helps us accomplish.
“Failure brings a certain level of learning that forces us out of our current way of thinking and way of being. Failure itself becomes the grindstone that smooths out the defects or imperfections of our thinking process,” Le says.
“The beauty happens when you’ve overcome the fear of failure and simply walk through situations knowing full well you will hit road blocks,” he adds.
“That is just part of the problem-solving process. Then, you’re able to solve immensely-challenging problems that you would never consider being able to do so.”
Preparing one’s mind for disappointment, discouragement — or wanting to quit as a default — can make constant setbacks less negative in one’s mind.
“I think embracing failure is definitely a mindset,” Guinea says.
“The key skill is knowing that most things that you encounter in life are not life and death. Put things into perspective and move on.”
He’s encouraged by what he perceives.
“I think failure is something that we are starting to normalize, in a good way,” Guinea says. “The perspective of someone who is comfortable with failure is something like, ‘I'll try this, and if it fails, I can always change direction and try something else.’”
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I haven't succeeded anything like Dyson has, so I'm in no position to say anything grand, but there's a lot here I can relate to. Beyond just the two axes of success and failure, it becomes practice in examining process against outcome, and sometimes failure hands you a result you never expected. I've heard Post-it notes came out of a failure, too. Less a road to success, more a side path that only became visible from the failure. It widens your options when something goes wrong — rather than a failure, I'd like to think of it as having more choices available to me in the future.
Personally, "enjoy failure" is probably the hardest part of the advice. Most people don’t enjoy the experience itself. They appreciate the lessons once they’ve had enough distance to see what it taught them. Stress on enough distance lol
Happy Tuesday, Michael.