23/8/2017 Learning from BAM Failure: Failure is Not the Enemy – Business as Mission

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Learning from BAM Failure: Failure is Not

the Enemy
June 20, 2017 / in Features, Learning from Failure / by Guest Author

by Chris Cloud
We’ve been focused on ‘maximizing BAM success factors
[http://businessasmission.com/category/bam-success-factors/] ‘
recently on The BAM Review blog. However, we believe that ‘utilizing
BAM failure’ is just as important – we can learn a lot about success
from failure. Business consultant and guest author Chris Cloud
introduces this new series on Learning from BAM Failure.

Failure is Not the Enemy

If there’s one thing we know, it’s that we’re going to fail at something.

There’s massive, catastrophic failure, and then there’s micro-failure.

People fail classes, fail at sports, fail at dating relationships. There’s
ministry failure. There’s failure to live up to our values.

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23/8/2017 Learning from BAM Failure: Failure is Not the Enemy – Business as Mission

Failure might be small, like a bad kick of the ball when the net was
wide open, or it might be as big as going out of business. Sometimes
business relationships fail. Sometimes a product launch fails, or your
great idea never gets o the ground. Failure is all around us, and it’s
de nitely a part of life.

There’s a tendency, especially in business, to think of failure as the

enemy.

But what if we looked at failure a di erent way? What if saw it as a

necessary element of the growth process?

Choose Your Failure-related Goal

Facebook’s motto during their early days was “move fast and break
things.”

As a startup, they knew they had to innovate quickly, and a

necessary component of rapid innovation is a high likelihood of
failure. They knew they were going to break things. But even when
things broke, they knew they didn’t want to be paralyzed by failure,
or the fear of failure. They wanted to get up quickly when they hit
the dirt, wanted to learn from it, and keep moving onto the next
thing.

I’ve been a lifelong snowboarder. As I’ve got ready to hit the slopes
around the world, I’ve often overheard beginners brag to each other.
They’ll say something like, “I went out yesterday and didn’t fall even
once!”

Some people’s goal is not to fall. 

If you know anything about skiing or snowboarding though, it’s not

that hard to get to ‘not falling’. What’s really hard is to get better, to
do increasingly technical things like jumps, tricks, and advanced
techniques on various types of challenging terrain.

These folks who simply are trying to avoid falling will never be great
at the sport. They’ll just be great at not falling.

I’ve snowboarded with Olympic gold and silver medalists, and guess
what? They fall all the time. It’s not because they aren’t any good, but
because they are constantly pushing the envelope and trying things
that they’ve never done before. Things that are extremely di cult.

Falling is a natural byproduct of progress, and Olympians know that.

They don’t see failure as failure. They see it as growth.

It’s not hard to “not fail” if we set the bar low.

Embrace Failure
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23/8/2017 Learning from BAM Failure: Failure is Not the Enemy – Business as Mission

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on

hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.
– Frank Wilczek, 2004 Nobel Prize winner

Sometimes in ministry-related ventures, we tend to have the wrong

view about failure.

What would happen to our ministries if we stopped being afraid of

failure, but instead chose to be afraid of stagnation and ‘low bar’
plateaus? What if we saw failure instead as a necessary component
of progress?

I’ve seen people fall o both sides of the wagon on this issue.

Some folks have no concern for failure at all, and as a result they live
in a constant state of failing. This is not what I’m talking about. I’m
talking about an approach to failure that leads to progress, to
forward momentum.

But the other unhelpful reaction can be a complete aversion to

failure, an unhealthy fear of it. This is also unhealthy, and can lead to
a dangerous paralysis.

I’m not glorifying failure. But I believe we can all use a mental shift.
Let’s fail fast, and fail forward. Don’t let the fear of future failure, or
the over-analysis of past failure keep you from moving forward.
You’ll be better for it.

Success is going from failure to failure with

undiminished enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

In the next few articles, we are going to explore various components

of failure as well as speci c examples from people who have failed in
small and big ways and what they have learned on the journey.

Resources for Further Reading and Study

1. Move Fast and Break Things
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K3WN3CG/_encoding=UTF8?
coliid=I2LUKGP2OYGWY4&colid=1026WFBVKU9DN]  by
Jonathan Taplin (Book)

2. Keep a Resume of your Failures

[http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/18/wharton-professor-adam-
grant-says-keep-a-resume-of-failures.html]  by Adam Grant,
Wharton Professor (Article)

3. Stop Saying Sorry and Say Thank You Instead

[http://www.boredpanda.com/stop-saying-sorry-say-thank-you-
comic-yao-xiao]  by Yao Xiao (Comics with a message)

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