Bust

It starts with futile attempts to replace a cell phone that went for a swim in a vat of gravy at a certain fast food restaurant which shall remain nameless. “File not found” is the message I receive upon clicking on links to the materials I’ve been anxiously awaiting to incorporate into a big presentation.  The dog has eaten my homework, or at least this is how I sound to myself as I answer a colleague’s request for updates on multiple initiatives we’ve made little-to-no progress on. As I crawl over the finish line at five o’clock a candidate I am trying to recruit to my team has mercy on me saying, “You haven’t sold me on it, but I’ll consider it anyway”. 

The universe is conspiring against me today and it’s time to cut my losses. Everything I try to do is met with an extra level of resistance.  Even the manager’s manager (yes I’m that persistent) at the AT&T store can’t find a way to take the $700 I’m ready to fork over for a new phone because “the system” won’t allow it.  I fail to explain to my colleague that we’ve been in triage mode for the last three months on this assignment and while her strategic priorities were assigned to others, they weren’t deemed critical to our survival, and therefore didn’t get enough of my attention.  I let my emotions get the best of me with these failures, and it impacts my day.  I can’t muster the excitement to entice a candidate to take on a new assignment. I can’t find the energy to search other avenues for my presentation materials.

There is a part of me that says these are signs to step away and do something else. Maybe I’ve done all I can today?  I’ll come back tomorrow when things feel easier to tackle.  I’ll be successful then. But, wait a minute, what if I’m not successful tomorrow? 

Few of us expect to fail when we set out to do something.  I know I don’t.  Yet the reality is things can and do go wrong.  Regularly, in fact, unless you’re somehow more than a mere mortal. What if we walked into new situations expecting that we will fail a few times before we figure out how to get it right?   If we can get better at expecting failure as a precursor to success, I’m wondering if that would leave us with more emotional energy to invest into picking ourselves up and trying again.

Getting into an argument with the AT&T representative doesn’t make me feel any better, it’s not who I want to be, and it doesn’t get me a phone any faster.  However, giving some feedback about my experience and suggestions to empower his team on the sales floor means maybe something will change for the next customer. I can beat myself up for not being Wonder Woman, able to single-handedly stop the blood flowing from every orifice of my current assignment, or I can look at the decisions I’ve made around delegation and why the expected results weren’t delivered.

At the end of the day we all want to feel good about what we do.  We’re programed to believe that good feelings only come with success; that failure must equate to bad feelings.  I’d like to change that dynamic.  Not because I’ll settle for failure, but because I can learn from failure. Failure alerts us to what’s broken and creates an obligation to make change.  I can’t think of a faster way to success.