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Brilliant Mistake: Actually, Failure Can Be an Option
August 7, 2008

The other day, I was in my poking through my bookshelves, and came across—and had an urge to reread— Lewis Thomas’ wonderful collections of essays on biology, The Medusa and the Snail, and one of my favorite essays of his is one called “The Wonderful Mistake,” a meditation on the DNA molecule’s built-in capacity for error.

We know that it is thanks to errors in the replication of the DNA molecule that give rise to “mutations” which over time add up to evolutionary change or “descent with modification.” Here’s the rub: if the DNA molecule had been completely perfect with no capacity for error, evolution would not have been able to occur. In other words, according to Dr. Thomas, if human scientists had designed the DNA molecule, what we regard as one of its most vital aspects would have been seen as an egregious error. How can you not love this quote:

Imagine the consternation of human scientists successfully engaged in the letter-perfect replication of prokaryotes, nonnucleated cells like bacteria, when nucleated cells suddenly turn up. Think of the agitated commissions assembled to explain the scandalous proliferation of trilobites all over the place, the mass firings, the withdrawal of tenure.

As human beings, as businesspeople, as marketers—as whatever it is we are—we are no strangers to errors or mistakes, and I was reminded of the Thomas essay after reading an interview on CNN Money with Yale University School of Management’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld who has become something of an expert on failure. Or, that is, how businesspeople fail, then rebound and ultimately achieve success, and the lessons learned during the “down time” ultimately lead to the “up time.”

Does failure - or beating back failure - make you a better person?
It makes a hero. Joseph Campbell wrote about this. The hero has certain consistent qualities in every culture: a common touch, a call to greatness, a critical trial and a setback. Failure punctuates truly great leaders. They aren’t great until they’ve failed. Failure is the crucible, the test. They deal with it, and their confidence and capabilities are enhanced.

Think of it as akin to the Nietzschean quote, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” How we handle failure ultimately has the potential to let us rebound.

What else do successful rebounders do?
They create a new purpose. Many people think that prominent people rebound because they're wealthy and have access to resources and great connections - or luck. No, it’s the conscious choices they make.

So instead of being stigmatized by failing, we should be emboldened (or “embiggened,” to quote Jebediah Springfield) by it. Or as Elvis Costello once sang, “It was a fine idea at the time now it’s a brilliant mistake.” And the word ”error” itself is derived from an older root word meaning “to wander about, looking for something,” which strikes me as more than a little appropriate.

As marketers, we are in a perilous time, where success requires a great deal of “thinking outside the box” (or actually denying that the box exists at all) and trying new things. Many of us are scared of trying new things and of engaging in the type of experimentation that is needed, lest we fail. But I would argue that we would learn more from a failed marketing program than a successful one. (Naturally, if I had my druthers, I’d opt for the successful one...) But by learning from our mistakes, we are better able—ideally—to see where we went wrong, and “rebound.”

Not that we should set out to fail (except maybe in a Producers kind of way), but I think need to evolve a business climate that doesn’t treat it as a stigma. Rather, it should be a badge of honor. After all, errors are how we evolve.

Posted by Richard Romano on August 7, 2008 | Comments (1)