Failures are hurdles of success.

This is one of my favorite sayings. Yes. MY sayings. I said that!

I’m comfortable celebrating this one because I’ve said a lot of dumb things. Ask Mrs. DePasquale.

They say necessity is the mother of invention.

We know there is a lot of need out there. Inventions are abundant. There are a lot of water purification systems, food trains, medical gadgets, and medicines. I’m not saying more aren’t needed but innovation is forthinking.

Proactivity

Taking action is so important. So, why don’t you do this more often?

You fear failure. Read E-Impact 45 or listen to Speaking of Impact episode 45 with John Davis for more on fear.

I’m here to tell you that you should seek failure. If you can’t handle that then seek innovation and plan on finding failure along the way.

You desire something great when you seek innovation. That great thing might be a state of being more than a specific event. However, it’s still isolated. If it were abundant, it wouldn’t be innovative to dream about it.

Your proactivity will ensure you find other events and states of being along the way that will happen multiple times.

The point is that the less significant things will happen more than the most significant thing.

This is why it’s worth it to focus on those smaller things. You can create an incredible amount of leverage by increasing the quality of your minor activities. This is done through proactivity.

Do things repeatedly before they are needed to stay ahead of the quality curve.

The Innovative Mindset

There is no way to have a perfect innovation plan. Luck will not get you to perfection. See the November 24th, 2020 E-Impact Blog entry for more on this subject.

An innovative mindset uses a proactive approach to work. It’s not completely random but it’s much closer to that than precise planning based on experience. The idea is to hold your experience close but step out of your comfort zone.

The innovative mindset is aggressive but not reckless. It “makes haste slowly”. It is proactive in pursuit of something new but with a focus on sustainable quality.

Sustainability

It’s no good to run toward something so fast that you burn out or experience a catastrophe.

I find the biggest tell to whether you are being innovative or reckless is your ability to keep at whatever you are doing. There are a certain few times in the impact space when all-out sprints are necessary. These are generally related to emergencies and highly recognizable.

A baseline rule to abide by is;

If you can’t do it repeatedly, don’t do it repeatedly.

You can try just about anything once but you should be able to judge sustainability quickly.

Habits

Habits are a critical point to proactivity. You have to get used to taking initiative.

I’m someone who struggles with silence. I listen to things all day. It’s partially because I am somewhat uncomfortable with silence but it’s also because I’ve developed a habit of information capture. I enjoy learning and feel as if it is the best use of my time.

Habits are related to those minor things that on their own might not seem impactful, but when you add them up over time, they have a real effect.

Develop great habits as a force for proactivity.

Risk

Humans are designed to be aware of risk. It’s what keeps us safe from ourselves (and outside forces). If I wasn’t afraid of heights< I would have died a long time ago. There are already all kinds of videos out there of people doing dumb things. Conventional wisdom tells us not to jump off of buildings or mess around with wild animals. But, we do it anyway.

Most people outside of those who’ve significantly reduced the risks because of endless hours of training, technology, and professional safety measures wouldn’t dare partake in these activities. There would have to be some tremendous gain to risk one’s life.

Risk cannot be avoided in innovation. In fact, it should be sought.

You know a challenge exists when you find risk.

Evaluation

Just because you find a risk doesn’t mean you should take it. The best risks are out there but so are the worst and so are the middling ones. The idea is that you need to evaluate the risks as you find them.

You will not find enough good ones if you don’t see them. Don’t get lazy here. Seek them and then have a laser-focused filter for evaluation.

10 Steps to Evaluate a Risk

Know what a catastrophic problem is
Know what and who is at risk
Know ways to fix problems
Don’t be afraid of problems
Talk with trusted partners
Have comparison/data points
Have past examples
Expect questions
Don’t expect every answer
Give more time to evaluation than finding

Comparison

There will be times when you find plenty of chances (risks) to take. You can compare them to previous risks to help make a decision on which you should.

It can be overwhelming to evaluate too many risks at once. It pays to have a good process using previous experience to quickly analyze opportunities. And that’s exactly how we have to see risks - as opportunities.

Address your notes from previous risks you and your team have taken on. Ask yourself if you’d like a challenge similar to one you’ve already had or if you need something new. This is a quick way to pair things down. Can you overcome something similar or is it not new enough?

Failure is Needed

You need failure for two reasons:

It guarantees your chances for innovation
It provides growth

You’re Saying There’s a Chance?

Just having a chance is all you can really ask for.

Failure is scary because of the unknown. You don’t know if you are going to be successful. You also don’t know that you’ll be able to innovate. You could wind up in the same exact place.

Have you ever been lost and tried to take a different route only to end up back where you started? Failing on the search for innovation can be just like this.

The opposite is also true. If I’m not mistaken, Viagra was originally some sort of heart medication.

See this article from The Guardian. Angina is the pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart. I would say that is a more serious condition than erectile dysfunction, but nonetheless, it’s a billion-dollar industry. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders, 30 million men in the United States of America suffer from this condition.

Who knows, you might invent something critical for society by accident!

Growth

Even if you don’t find breakthrough innovation in failure, you’ll at least learn from it. There is good debate around whether learning or application is more indicative of growth. I would say both are required for its application but each is part of the theory on its own. In other words, you’re going to grow as you learn from your missteps.

The presence of growth keeps you confident that you can indeed innovate. If you can get better than you can produce something better for the world.

Failing Forward

Another popular term out there is “failing forward”.

I believe it’s nearly impossible for an Impactmaker to fail backward.

With that being said, I’d give up worrying about it altogether. You’re acutely aware of things that could happen but don’t let it hold you back. You like to create things, solve problems, be generous, and help other people. These are all great signs that every setback will teach you something.

Failing forward is not really about a special way of messing up. It’s about your reaction to what happened. If you do nothing, I suppose it’s failing sideways. If you spiral into a state of depression and destruction, that would be failing backward. But the moment you go “back to the drawing board”, you’ve moved forward.

Important note that when evaluating a risk you should consider the worst of repercussions. A significant chance of giving up or being forced to would indicate it’s a risk you should not take.

The Necessity

There is no doubt that an innovative person has a special mindset. They possess the ability, the desire, and some fearlessness.

The ability gives them a chance to be successful.

The desire makes them try.

The fearlessness makes them continue when others wouldn’t.

I’m not telling you to change your way of thinking. I’m telling you that you already have the right mindset but you may not realize how to maximize it’s usefullness.

Some of the ablest, desiring, and fearless people I know have a large portion of misplaced energy. The simple reason for this is they are being fed terrible messaging.

They are told the necessary traits they have are not effective, or even worse, bad.

Don’t ever forget that you must have all three of those things to be an innovative impactmaker.

Success is Not the Opposite

The dictionary would tell you that success and failure are antonymous. This is technically true. The problem is that there is a spectrum of success and it’s a journey, not a single event. You may lose a battle but that could bring you one step closer to winning the war. Your definition of success in the impact space is in fact not solving a single problem in a single moment. It’s about sustained success.

You wouldn’t want to help a population of people for a short period of time and have them back in the same situation (or worse) after you’re done.

As long as you’re alive, you’re not done. Failures are hurdles of success.

Success is a perpetual state of good.

Failure is the Necessity of Innovation