Go out and Fail...Please

Here is what I wrote about failure in 2007

Cirque du Soleil has a secret, and it’s big.

It is that the performers are failures. They fail consistently, every day, every show, sometimes every minute.

Every performer, every day—failure.

Recently I went to a Cirque du Soleil show—not my first, but the first I’ve seen with my high-performance-coaching eyes. What I saw, besides an incredibly entertaining show and story with amazing tricks, choreography, and acrobatics, was a bunch of mistakes—failures, if you will. I suspect very few in the audience noticed the mistakes, but I did, and it got me thinking about failure, and its value in high performance.

Each of those performers has failed so many times in practice, if they are going to fail during the performance, they know when and how it will happen. They know this because it has already happened hundreds, thousands of times. It happens in practice, in rehearsal, even in the shows.

One performer, a clown-like character, was doing gymnastics and tricks on a ladder. In addition to doing the tricks, he had to keep the ladder on its two feet. To begin any trick, he had to balance and climb the ladder. Three times he got part or most of the way up and slid back down, as if that were part of the show. Truth was, he was failing. He had lost control of the ladder and needed to start over.

How did he know?

My guess is he had failed hundreds of times in practice and in shows. That did not stop him from going on in front of a crowd of people each night and failing—again.

How many times have you not done something because you might fail?

How many times have you had a great idea or been inspired about something and then did not go for it because you think it might not work out?

In our culture we do not tolerate the learning curve. We expect that we can do something perfectly the first time, and if we suspect in the slightest way that we can’t, then we won’t even try, because we might fail.

Of course you’re going to fail! It’s the only way to learn. Wow! Now that’s a powerful double-bind we’re in: I can’t try because I might fail, but I can’t learn because in order to learn I have to fail. No wonder some people never get off the couch.

How does the ladder guy know what to do when he loses his balance? He has learned through failing how to stay on, and very important, how to fail.

Cirque is a great show, and really just a series of failures made to look as if they were meant to be. When the performers mess up, they don’t stop and say, “Wait, wait, stop the show, I just messed up, I need to start over.” No, they go on as if nothing happened, as if that was part of the show.

How do you handle it when you begin to fail? Do you push on through or put the brakes on, stop the event, get out of the car, and make yourself wrong?

The difference between high performers and low performers is, high performers have made thousands more mistakes than low performers.

In the January 2007 issue of Outside magazine, America’s greatest runner, Dean Karnazes, who runs ultra marathons (50 or 100 miles at a time) and who just ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, talked about failure.

“Unless you are pushing yourself, you are not living to the fullest. You cannot be afraid to fail, but unless you fail, you have not pushed enough. If you look at successful people and happy people, they fail a lot, because they are consistently trying to expand and go further….”

Oh, and what about baseball players? The mean batting average of a professional ball player is something less than .300. (The all-time record for batting average in the major league is held by Ty Cobb at .366.) That means a player gets on base—succeeds—only three of every 10 times he goes up to bat. What? Yep, they are willing go to the plate knowing that on any given day, years and years of statistics support that seven out of 10 times they will fail.

And before you go to the plate, you want to know for sure. Are you crazy?

What makes them willing to go to the plate despite the odds?

The real paradox is that being able to manage that level of failure is one of the reasons they become professionals. What? Yes, in all three examples, these high performers are all doing the same thing putting themselves in a position to fail, expecting not to, knowing the possibility of it, being prepared for the possibility, having enough experience to know what failure feels like, and still being willing to go to the plate, attempt to run 100 miles or get on the wobbly ladder in front of hundreds of people.

High performance, then, does not mean making no mistakes. It means tolerating your learning curve and the failure that will come with learning long enough to get into a position to succeed.

What are you willing to fail for? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? Does failure really exist, or have we made it up to keep ourselves small?

Curious about high performance? Let’s talk.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

—Thomas Edison, inventor

Copyright 2007 Greystone Guides. All rights reserved.