Tenacity is ineffective failure. That is, if we keep pushing and working hard on our projects until we’re successful, paradoxically we may never be successful. Instead, we must view being wrong and failing as a forward step. The progress isn’t pushing one project forward until the end. Instead, progress looks like this:
- Do something
- Fail
- Stop
- Assess
- Restart better
If we fail intentionally, we’ll accelerate the process and actually achieve our goals and be successful (however we define that) faster.
Further, if we own a business or manage a team, we must actually encourage mistakes and failures. We must celebrate them. Name mistakes after the people who made them, not as a way to belittle the person or memorialize the failure in a negative way, but rather to commend the initiative, ambition, and bravery of the person who made the mistake or failed. This will remind everyone else of how much the entire team learned as a result and how that contributed to the team’s success. Mistakes and failures serve as an opportunity for the business to learn something crucial that competitors may have missed. Further, this practice encourages people to admit mistakes rather than ignore them or cover them up, compounding their impact and preventing the hidden opportunities from being seen.