If you have guessed from the picture for the post that this post was prompted by the career of Zaha Hadid who passed away a few days ago -it is correct.

Failure is common to all mankind and to people from all walks of life. Every enterprise whether it be social, corporate, tech world has tasted failure. There is no escape from failure and it tends to be more public than success. The simple truth is – no great success was ever achieved without failure.

Edison's 10,000 attempts to create a light bulb or Dyson’s 5,126 attempts to invent a bagless vacuum cleaner are examples of failures leading to successful products.

There are two types of failure, as define by Merriam-Webster:

  • Lack of success - of an idea or product or business or concept.
  • The omission of expected or required action - to do something or a failure of process.

We are not talking about a failure to do something or a failure of process for which there is no excuse. but rather failure of acceptance of an idea or product or business or concept

We may like it or not, failure is a necessary stepping stone to achieving anything.

"Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” - C.S. Lewis

Failure points to stepping stones to success rather than steps to the bottom of an abyss. Failure is important aspect of living, work or play equally as success or rather I dare say more important than success it self.

"Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success" -  J.K. Rowling

Success is savored and appreciated better and seen in a different perspective when one has tasted failure.

We talk more about success and are quick to celebrate success while avoid talking about failure. By avoiding nor considering the reason for the failure or learn from the failures of our concept, initiatives, ideas and strategy is a missed opportunity. We need our teams to experiment, facilitate failure within reason and cultivate the spirit of entrepreneurship and I turn learn from these experience and excel.

"When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.” - Eloise Ristad

Society has a whole has to change its unrealistic stubbornness not to talk about failure. We are quick to point out others failures and mentally pat our own backs and as we are successful. Our refusing to talk about failure leads to fear created by failure. By accepting failure as a part of life and learning from it will definitely slow down the need to take one’s life. As Angel Chernoff writes on her blog: Learn from your mistakes (failure), but don’t regret.  Life is change, things go wrong, and life goes on.

When hiring talent one of the key question we need to ask for:

  • Examples of failure
  • Lessons learned from failure
  • How failure lessons propelled them to success.

 When working with a team on a project:

  • Conduct lessons learned after each phase
  • Identify the success and failures
  • Learn from both and talk about it

The present digital economy has rendered our age old assumptions no more relevant and the metrics of success are being redefined and where the clarity of words we use to discuss business, standbys like marketplace and competitive advantage, are redefined and rendered almost meaningless. In this environment where no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed, where technology and society are growing at a faster pace than organisation and corporation can catch up we have to change out attitude towards failure. 

The dizzy change of the digital economy has outpaced our outpaced our industrial-era organizations and infrastructure, they end up hitting institutional cul-de-sacs. The changes of the digital economy have outpaced the ability of organisations to exist “as is” and its ability to succeed.

Richard Drew indicates in his Newsweek article In Silicon Valley, Failing Is Succeeding – If enormous failure is the only sure path to creating tech superstars, no place in the world is better set up for failure than Silicon Valley; and Steve Jobs was perhaps the greatest failure who made good there. After getting the boot from Apple, he went on to found NeXT Computers and Pixar, and then returned to Apple in the greatest turnaround in corporate history.

For Silicon Valley failure is more than attitude. It’s failure business has been machined to perfection as it easier to try and fail now more than ever.

Failure to launch is common in most architectural practice / careers where unbuilt schemes outnumber built projects by a large margin. It was common in the life of Dame Zaha Hadid - who passed away a few days ago - whose earlier years as a struggling architect were littered with failures of unbuilt assignments starting with The Peak and continued on for 10 years till the Cardiff Bay Opera House was built.  She went to on to make architecture genuinely popular which has its roots in what was once called the avant garde. She was an architect who first imagined, then proved, that space could work in radical new ways.

To get back to the question of this post: Is failure an hindrance to creativity? The answer is no. Success and creativity rises up from the ashes of failure.

I would love to hear your opinion on this.

Philip Thomas - Optimizing Project Delivery Services; Workplace Experience Strategist; Design & Circular Thinking; Evangelist for disrupting the AEC Industry.

I do write on Enhancing Client Experience; Project Management; Design Thinking and Circular Thanking; The Untethered Workplace – The Future of Work & the Workplace of the Future and on Disrupting the AEC industry.

To read more on these subject go to our Blog page on our website: www.optumplus.com