Failure

We find ourselves in failure. For forty years Moses led his people through a wilderness. It was the wilderness experience that created a true community.

Generations later the descendants of those who had suffered the wilderness were conquered. They had forgotten the unique character forged in those forty years and were banished to Babylon. For another forty years they suffered in exile, were renewed, and were able to reclaim their unique identity.

There is a tendency to understate our failures and to obscure bad decisions. Moses does not do this. The books of Genesis and Exodus are mostly one disaster after another. Fundamental to the concept of “chosen people” is that the honor is not earned by merit, but extended as an unearned gift and often abused.

Moses faces impatience, laziness, misunderstanding, betrayal, rebellion, and more. Each event is recorded in some detail for our reading – and edification – more than 3000 years later. This is not a glossy, happy Annual Report. The first two books of Moses are much more similar to a 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission written by the toughest lawyers and accountants while the firm is going through a Chapter 11 Reorganization. It can be painful to read.

Peter Senge argues that this pain is an emotional response to the gap between what is envisioned and what is real. He encourages staying with the pain and using it to close the gap. “Failure is, simply, a shortfall… Failure is an opportunity for learning – about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies that didn’t work as expected, about the clarity of the vision. Failures are not about our unworthiness or powerlessness.” Recognizing failure and making the investment to understand its cause is a pathway to success.

Holocaust survivor and psychologist Victor Frankl writes, “A human being strives for success but, if need be, does not depend on his fate, which does or does not allow for success. A human being, by the very attitude he chooses, is capable of finding and fulfilling meaning in even a hopeless situation.”

Finding the meaning in failure was fundamental to the leadership of Moses. For him meaning goes far beyond immediate cause and effect, it is an explanation of fundamental identity. How we choose to respond to failure is how we find, perhaps how we create, who we are to be.

Two stories: More than a decade ago my consulting firm was retained by a software company attempting to shift their market-leading products from hard-drives to the web. We were well-paid to utilize and evaluate their new web-based offering. The client product was poorly conceived and executed for the web. This was so early in the market’s transition to the web that the client could have re-conceived their approach and had a very good chance at maintaining their strong customer base. Instead they rejected our evaluation, insisted on retailing their product, were rejected by customers, lost tons of money, and the company no longer exists.

In April 2000 I was an outside director on the Board of a dot.com start-up. The product was not where we had planned it would be, we needed additional funding to get it to market. Our venture capital partners were considering a new round. We also had a merger offer.

For the founders and major investors every element of pride and hope pushed for continued independence. The outside directors and one VC director were not so sure. For reasons mostly related to internal realities, we pushed for serious consideration of the merger. One of the co-founders ultimately joined in pushing for the merger. He said, “We can’t let our dreams obscure our realities.” The company was sold. Everyone involved recovered their original investments and did a little better. We did not know it, but we were in the last days of the dot.com bubble. If we had waited another 90 days it is likely the entire enterprise would have crashed and burned.

In both cases there was failure – a gap between future vision and current reality. At the first company maintaining the illusion of success was more important than recognizing an actual failure. In my judgment this sort of behavior consistently characterized that company and its principal leaders. There was no true self at this enterprise, largely because there was not much interest in the truth.

In the second organization the co-founder’s readiness to accept reality was fundamental to a happy outcome. He was able to find fulfillment despite failure. The co-founder knew that his task was not to justify himself, but to understand reality and take actions consistent with that reality; and in the process to find himself, refine himself, and, perhaps in the words of Victor Frankl, even transcend himself.