General Business Strategy

One Failure at a Time

Have you ever really, truly failed at something? What I mean to ask is, have you ever tried something hoping to get a result that you never even came close to attaining? How did you deal with this failure? Did you decide to let it define you, or did you choose to redefine it?

Recently, we’ve come up against one or two of these types of failures in our efforts to bring Design Thinking to a wider audience. We started to let this define our work, but then managed to catch ourselves.

Instead of going down a path of fear, we decided upon a path of knowledge. We took a long, hard, and, most importantly, honest look at our failures. This honest view point (i.e. Admitting to ourselves that “We did not come close to succeeding here.) allowed us to ask WHY we failed, then alter our plans to try again.

It’s a simple concept in theory, but one of those that can be extremely difficult to put into practice. Once we did put it into practice, however, that is when the successes started to unfold.

One failure at a time. Step by step.

*Photo by Matt Palmer.