Fail now, succeed later

My former colleague Divina Paredes wrote Fail now, succeed later for the New Zealand edition of CIO magazine. It’s only short, but it’s well worth reading. Paredes quotes Gartner vice-president Steve Prentice as saying by encouraging and rewarding business process failures, companies can put themselves on the fast track to optimal solutions.

Prentice looks at failure from a geeky, tech management perspective. That’s understandable given his job and the CIO magazine audience. But the principal works just as well on an individual basis – although not necessarily in the same way.

By taking chances and failing, we can learn better ways to do things in the future. That’s why managers. In fact everyone. Should be tolerant of individual failure. While there are some people who are serial failures, most of us learn from mistakes. Some people are perfect or live charmed lives, the rest of us tend to stumble towards success taking three steps forward and two steps back.

CIO > Fail now, succeed later.