I Fail Every Day

Success is like pregnancy 

Everybody congratulates you but nobody knows how often you've been screwed. This joke was suggested to me on social media. It strikes me how thoroughly the algorithm must have analyzed my preferences in order to make such an accurate prediction, that I would enjoy it. However I would choose a slightly different analogy: Success is like impregnation: Everyone congratulates you but nobody knows how often you have screwed up. It is in screwing up that you'll learn the valuable lessons of life. You can think and analyze as much as you want. Analysis, planning and preparation are all fine. But only deliberate execution and the mistakes you make along your journey will guide you to success. That's beauty and pain in success at the same time. That is also the reason that success favors people who are passionate and enthusiastic about their journey and have a clear purpose. Enduring the frustration and the drawbacks along the way is much easier if you have faith that you will accomplish your goals no matter what.

Fail First and Frequently

I start my day by playing the piano. Early in the morning, when the brain is not fully booted, the easiest tasks can be challenging. Therefore, playing songs that I have only learned recently usually don't work out too well and I make lots of mistakes. My approach is to ignore the mistakes during the first minutes and to just 'warm up' a bit. Next I play some older pieces that I can perform more safely without mistakes. On very rare occasions it works and I get them right the first time. If done right, the human brain can be warmed up very quickly. However, as soon as I get too comfortable with a piece, meaning that I can perform it with great likelihood without any mistakes, I proceed to a new song. Learning a new song means to me going back to square one and starting from scratch - it is the ultimate change experience, in that I go through each of the four phases again and again: 

1. Complete ignorance: How am I supposed to -ever- learn this??? 
2. Shock: I will never be able to play this.
3. Acceptance: Alright, it is a question of time but I can learn this.
4. Performance: Let's see how I can play this with no mistakes at all.

Nobody hears me play when I rehearse. I can make all the mistakes I want. When I play a song to an audience there's almost no chance of a mistake. But even if I make one I just play it cool and go on with the song. The important thing is not to never make mistakes, but rather not to break the streak. 

David Has Failed More Often Than Goliath Has Even Tried

In large parts of German work culture there is little tolerance for failure. During the past decade I have worked for dozens of companies on various projects and I realized how few of them foster a healthy and open minded failure culture. Large corporations especially have a hard time changing their working culture and establishing a tolerance or even an appetite for failure. Risking failure is still a big taboo in large parts of German work environments. Ever since I started playing an instrument I am even more willing to challenge what I believe to know and to deliberately risk some mistakes in the process. If you're not prepared to make your own mistakes, you will have more issues with tolerating other people's mistakes. However the play it safe strategy does not work in vast areas of modern businesses, because the development cycles have shortened and products and services have become more integrated and interdependent. If you work in software development you will know that you can't survive long unless you are ready to change your perspective and to challenge established knowledge -your own or not- on a regular basis. The German automotive industry is feeling the pressure from start ups that have not been around as little as ten years ago: Tesla and Nio are threatening established behemoths like BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen. Does anyone still know Opel?

Fail Fast And Move On

I suggest you set up a strategy on how to handle failure, if you haven't already. 

Here's a simple and effective 5 step plan:

1. Be bold, innovate and have the courage to tolerate some mistakes.
2. Try to fail in a safe environment - build in tests and quality checks in the production process.
3. Don't overanalyze - solve the problem and move on.
4. Encourage others to make decisions - a wrong decision is always better than a late decision or no decision at all. No decision leads to no action leads to no learning leads to no progress.
5. Be prepared to fail a lot - remember how pregnancy works; It's supposed to be fun :-)