Building Success on a Foundation of Failures

“We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down.”  – Dave Snowden

We build success on a foundation of failures.

Let’s define a failure.

Simply, it’s when the desired outcome does not match the intent. Not all failures result in pain, injury, or an even negative result. Things just don’t go as planned.

Sometimes your team scores a touchdown on a broken play. You’re happy that you’ve scored, but it certainly didn’t go as intended.

Yes, that’s a failure. Did you pay attention? Did you ask why it didn’t go as you intended or are you basking in the favorable result and ignoring the fact that you got lucky?

I’m okay with being lucky. It happens all the time as we work and live in a complex world, but if we don’t pay attention, we miss an opportunity to get better at what we do.

There are certainly times when we cannot determine what happened. Why things went well. Why things went poorly.

You still need to try to make sense of it.

Ask probing questions.
Attend to the outcome.
Ingrain those outcomes into your nervous system.
Elaborate (aka write it down… longhand… not on a computer).

This is how you’ll refine your model.

The more refined the more successes.

Ingrain failures and learn from them.

I’ve said the wrong thing
I’ve done the wrong thing.
I’ve misinterpreted tests.
I’ve executed poorly.
I’ve failed.

I’ve also been successful. Moreso now than ever.

Because I’ve failed more and cared enough to want to get better.

Evolving Your Model is a Process

It may be quite simple at first.

Then you learn something new. You can now be critical of your prior biases. You evolve your thinking and your process.

In every profession and every walk of life, others failed too. Some wanted to get better and did. Some just showed up and took the paycheck.

The difference between a good therapist or coach and a bad one?

We all fail.

The good ones recognize the failure regardless of the outcome. They then make the effort to be better next time and not make the same mistake twice. Sure it still happens sometimes. We fail again. We follow our biases. We make the mistake, but each time, we make the necessary effort to get better.

There are moments when working with my Padawans in The Purple Room when you can see the questions in their eyes.

“How did you know to do [insert some form of intervention]?”

The knowing isn’t really knowing. It’s the experience of having failed enough times because we never really know. Complexity will not allow knowing.

The patterns just become more familiar with each success and each failure. This comes from gaining experience and learning what cannot be written down. It comes from learning from someone else’s experience.

It’s not in a manual or textbook.

It’s not available in a search engine.

That’s explicit knowledge.

It comes from interacting with other humans, seeing how it’s done, and doing it.

Explicit is easy. You can read it. It’s now mostly free on the internet.

Ever notice how few failures there are in blog posts. Every opinion seems correct.

THIS System is THE ONE.

When you have nothing, something seems better so you go with it. If you don’t have a counter-argument, anything you’re presented with will be taken as fact.

You buy in.

Rinse. Repeat.

I used to think this was a problem. Age has allowed me to understand that it’s just part of the process. It’s part of your personal and professional evolution.

It’s okay to latch on to something temporarily. It’s just where you are right now.

It’s only a problem if you stay there. Rather than evolving your model, you try to fit everything into your existing model.

The only model of the human system is the human system, and we haven’t got that one figured out yet. Not by a long shot. No one has it all figured out. Take what is useful and then move on.

You just need to get to next, whatever next is.

Complexity demands that you gain tacit knowledge. The unwritten. The difficult to explain.

The best coaches, therapists, teachers, and plumbers all learned from their own mentors and coaches. Then they evolved beyond their mentors.

Conclusion

Recognize where you are. It’s okay to be there.
Recognize that your professional growth and evolution is a process. Keep moving.
Fail (safely) and ingrain those failures.
Read widely.
Write and elaborate in your own words (longhand) daily.
Associate with and learn from others. Even if it’s what not to do, you have still learned something.