How The Game Is Played

The Beauty of Failure

Failure is a beautiful thing.

Failure is something to be proud of.

Those may sound like odd sentiments but someone today asked me “what one sentence of advice would you give Jonathan.” I knew instantly that my answer was “tell your execs they need to fail more.”

Why? Because an honest failure means you tried something. You made a decision, maybe before you had all the information, and acted on it. And as my parents taught me, that's a good thing. As a child I was rewarded for trying my best, regardless of the outcome. That instilled in me a self-confidence and ability to act that is an incredible advantage over those who don't have it.

Decision makers some-times lose, but the indecisive never win. There are all sorts of examples of how being willing to fail has led to success in this world. The Fuller Bursh company used to send their salespeople out with a score card. Every time they got a no, they were to tick a box off. They knew that statistically their salesmen would get 9 no's for every yes. By having them track the no's and think of them as "one more step to a yes" they made it okay to fail. And the result was a highly effective salesforce.

I attended a talk by the egineers who started Atari a few months back. The thing they listed as the single most important thing about Atari was that it was a place where it was okay to fail. And they had some spectacular failures. Anyone remember the Atari Music System? I thought not, it was a color organ you hooekd up to your TV. It was their product immediately after Pong and, as they say, they think they sold about 5. But that was okay, and it being okay was the magic of Atari and why Pong and the Atari2600 had a chance to go down in history.

The indursty I came from, the game industry, is all about spectacular risk taking. A modern single player video game takes upwards of 10 million dollars to produce. All of it is spent based on a hunch that what you are putting together is something that the public will eagerly accept. There are no formulas or rules, every rule anyone comes up with in entertainment is quickly proved wrong. About the only rule is that blockbusters are always unique, original, risky projects. But people do get rich in that industry, and thsoe who don't get rich, still get by despite failures and set-backs. But noone who is allergic to risk survives very long at all.

I said in a previous blog that Sun has the soul of a start-up, and I believe that, but indecision kills start-ups. We don't have the resources of an IBM or a Microsoft, we are not the T-Rex that can arrive at the party late and simply crush those already at the table. We are the little carrion dinosaur who can be crushed if we don't get in, grab our piece, and get out.

So what would I tell Jonathan. I'd tell him “tell your execs they have to be braver. Tell them they will get slapped far harder for missing an opportunity then for trying and failing and that they will get slapped hardest for playing conservative and under-committing to those decisions. Tell them to chose their horses and then ride them for all they are worth. But when the horse breaks its leg, shoot it dead and go look for another promising one."

In other words, tell them its okay to fail if you've given it your best shot.

Thats the most valuable thing my parents ever told me.

Posted at 05:27PM Apr 22, 2005 by gameguy in General  |  Comments[2]