Success demands a willingness to fail

Failure has become unacceptable, and that is a tragedy.

Failure provides some of the greatest lessons that each of us will ever learn. How many of us in our youth exhibited judgment that we find distasteful today? Experience is a painful teacher, but the lessons learned are invaluable. 

Yet, in today’s social media frenzied and socially divided society, everyone is expected to be correct, all the time and every time. 

Some of the most renowned and remembered figures in our nation’s history were colossal failures. 

Baseball player Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, a record that lasted for almost four decades. He also struck out 1,330 times, a record he also held for almost three decades. To be successful at hitting home runs demanded that he be willing to also strike out frequently. 

Inventor Thomas Edison was known for finding the winning solution by trial and error, or hunt and search, with each unsuccessful attempt a stepping stone to the right answer. He believed that perspiration, not inspiration were at the foundation of many great inventions and advances. As such, failure was the keystone for his many successes and inventions. 

Mistakes are the stepping stones to future success. When mistakes are made, lessons can be learned that provide insights into making better decisions in the future. 

Of course, if such lessons are not embraced, and future decisions are not better informed, then mistakes become the norm. Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein referred to this as insanity, believing that the same actions will produce different results.

Mistakes are a byproduct of taking actions into unchartered waters. It means taking risks. When such actions and their results get amplified on social media, they become subject to public scrutiny and criticism. 

Social media gives everyone the ticket to be a public critic. It is easy to become a harsh arbiter when one is safely barricaded in a cyber castle. This pushes some people in the public eye, like our elected representatives, to be less bold, traversing the safe route rather than the bold one. The net product of such an environment is fewer risks, fewer mistakes — and over time, fewer successes.

Our whole society has been gravitating toward an objective that is built less around finding success and more around avoiding failure. The challenge is that when the focus is around not failing, success becomes more difficult to attain.

A good example of this is when a football team is trying to protect a second-half lead by playing overly cautious. The net effect is that the trailing team is empowered, and often ends up winning. Recall the 2017 Super Bowl LI when the New England Patriots overcame a 25-point third-quarter deficit to defeat the Atlanta Falcons.

As a university professor, I teach my students that failure is the best predictor of future success. When I was a graduate student, my two lowest grades were in the two subjects in which I have made the most significant career contributions. Coincidence? Hardly. The subjects that presented the greatest challenges were also the ones that required the hardest work and most effort. This eventually gave me skills and insights that yielded the most substantive results. 

Young people must be taught that failure is an acceptable outcome, and how to use failure to build toward future success. This means teaching them how to embrace risk in a meaningful way. 

It is far riskier to take no risks than to assume an appropriate level of risk commensurate with the rewards that are available. Think of the person who puts their money in a bank account earning a pittance of interest while inflation erodes its buying power. By unknowingly believing they are taking no risk, they are assuming risks that will cost them far more over time. 

While young people need courses that teach them life skills to earn a living and manage their finances, teaching them the benefits of risk-taking and how to use failure as stepping stones for future success should be staples in our education system at every level. The challenge may be finding people with the necessary competencies to instruct on such topics.

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A data scientist, he applies his expertise in data-driven risk-based decision-making to evaluate and inform public policy.