3by9

Failing Honestly

Last week Mike and I were having a conversation about a company (that I will avoid naming because what would follow would be too draining) that never seemed to be able to take failure like men (or women). When it comes to failure it is always a bitter pill to swallow, but in the end there are lessons to be learned so the same mistakes do not get repeated again. However, so many of us like to look at failure and make excuses for why it happened. It is almost as if the failure never happened because it was purely due to bad luck.

Bad luck is signing a VC deal only to have an asteroid destroy the people who are about to give you money. Bad luck is accidently deleting the hot girls number after a night of drinking wine coolers. Bad luck isn’t ignoring that something is wrong with your company and then when it becomes to time to fess up to you it, you are full of excuses.

How many relationships have you been in that went horribly wrong and instead of looking back at what you might have done wrong you are quick to blame the other person or maybe unusual circumstances? We met at the wrong time. Distance kept us apart. She didn’t kiss me in the morning. You can’t have better relationships in the future until you figure out what was wrong in the past.

Many companies are learning this the hard way. Facebook will learn it, but it will be too late. The signs are already there. Twitter needs to recognize it quickly because there is no arguing it is going to happen to them as well. These two companies are fortunate to have money pouring out their ears though to protect them, what do you have?

Looking back at my soccer career I can’t remember a game where when I think about it, my first thought is “the ref lost the game for us.” I hated when my team said that. I hated when my coaches said that. I hated when my parents said that. Refs will always make bad calls, but rarely do they prevent you scoring over and over again. You don’t like losing and think it’s the ref’s fault because you lost 2-1? Well you should’ve scored 3 more goals to put the game out of reach.

My sophomore year in college I got an F in Probability. Now this class is hard enough, but doubly hard when you don’t attend class as often as you should. My first excuse was that I couldn’t understand the professor. That means for four months I did nothing about a situation that I knew I was heading towards with the piss poor excuse that I couldn’t understand someone. I failed myself.

Now I understand not everything is your fault and not every disaster can be averted. Looking at 9rules and the millions of changes we have made over the years I can see things that we should have done better, but most of it is simply following what we believed was right and it didn’t work out. Maybe it was bad luck or maybe we are just idiots for believing that a certain idea would work. There was never an excuse for why it didn’t work though.

Your business is failing now because of the economy right? Must be easy to sit back and say such things, but why isn’t your company economy proof? In life the writing is always on the wall about what should be done, it is up to us to actually read it and follow it. Lean to be honest with yourself through your failings and you will find that you are not only making your company stronger, but yourself stronger as well.