My Failure Framework

You want to hear something great? Failure. I know that might not sound right to you but I’m going to elaborate on why that’s the case, and share with you what I do when I fail.

First off, the fact that you failed means that you tried. Former US president Theodore Roosevelt was quoted saying “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” The attempt should be celebrated, and it in itself is more meaningful than we give it credit for. Most importantly, failure is a lesson. It is incredible feedback about your process, and allows you to learn at an accelerated rate. But, this is only possible when you allow yourself to pull the lessons embedded in the failure.

And that’s what I do, I have a Failure Reflection Framework that takes me through a series of prompts to really understand my performance, the good and bad about it, and identify areas for improvement moving forward.

Ultimately, what the framework does is it brings your awareness to the opportunities you didn’t pursue and the insights you didn’t consider. Then it gives you the structure you need to figure out what you’re going to do next to apply those learnings, because what matters most is using the experience to inform your next attempt.