Fail Better in the New Year!

As a college president, I do not encourage our students to fail, however, there is a place for failing.  When we try something new, we will not always succeed.  I was recently in a meeting.  One of the participants, CIO for a large financial firm who hires new networking grads, said that the number one attribute that he always wants in a new hire is curiosity, and desire to learn, to solve a puzzle, to not be afraid to fail.

This was a significant statement that stuck with me.

Inventors know this is true.  Here's a quote from Thomas Edison; "I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."  What if Edison gave up?  We might not have had all the wonderful inventions that we now take for granted.

And for those of you who want more education related inspiration; "Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education." -- John Hersey

If we knew everything, why would we bother to learn.  And we all know that we don't always get it right.  Trial and error, guessing, trying again, cultivating curiosity, a thick skin, the ability to go back into the fray and keep doing it until we get it right.

I always found that I strove to learn more when things were not as comfortable, when situations were on the precipice of tipping over the edge.  While in social work school, I learned about homeostasis, which is a balance, but often an uncomfortable balance.  We are not happy in that homeostasis, quite often.  Do you remember being a child on the playground, up at the top side of the teeter-totter?  We knew that if our fellow teeter-totterer was kind, we would land gently, but it was just as likely that we could come down with a crash.  I don't know about you, but I would often climb down from that tippy top place (which felt so high up as a young child), so I would not come crashing down.  I learned a new way.

courtesy of http://minneapolisparkhistory.com/2012/09/24/now-thats-a-teeter-totter/

 The 11/16/14 issue of NY Times Magazine is the innovation issue, or as they state; "this issue is dedicated to innovation's less remarked-upon cousin, without which there would be no better mousetrap:  failure." (p39)

And often, when we get lost, we find new things to explore and love.  "We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.  We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery." -- Samuel Smiles

Here's to a New Year filled with discovery, joy, innovation, tipping the balance and failure!