Are You Ready for the Thrill of Defeat?

Greg Hiner, the current CEO of Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, a three-billion-dollar Toledo-based company, believes in "celebrating" failure rather than maligning it. This isn't an exercise in corporate masochism, simply a recognition that the painful lessons learned from failure can pave the way to greater success. That's why Hiner immediately took an 800-million-dollar tax write-off on an asbestos litigation case after taking over the helm at Owens-Corning in 1992. He recognized that past failures were holding his management team back from trying new things. He wanted them to put the failure behind them rather than continue to dwell on its consequences. The head of Nomura Securities, one of Japan's wealthiest companies, shares Hiner's positive outlook on failure. Although it may sound strange, he's concerned that Nomura hasn't had enough failures. Why? He believes that failures force you to develop new ways of thinking and doing things, whereas success, on the other hand, can make you complacent. Rather than looking at and experimenting with new ideas, it encourages you to take the easy way out by endlessly trying to duplicate your past victories.

The professors who run the Harvard MBA program agree with this perspective. That's why their students study failed companies. The experts at this prestigious graduate school know you can learn a lot by understanding where other people went wrong. They say copying someone else's formula for success is unlikely to yield as great a payoff, since the competition has already captured the market.

Review the life story of any highly accomplished individual and you'll almost always find a history of failures and recoveries. Usually, the person is someone who was determined to succeed against the odds.



Abraham Lincoln is my favorite example of this determination. "Honest Abe's" public report card reads like the record of an "F" student. Born into poverty, he failed in business twice, lost eight elections and suffered a nervous breakdown before becoming one of this country's most successful presidents.

Why did he persist?

"A duty to strive is the duty of us all," Lincoln said. "I felt a call to that duty."

I talked about why having a dream, a sense of mission or a calling is so important for success. Having a greater goal helps when coping with failures, too, by allowing you to place individual setbacks into a larger context. When you believe that your goals are truly worth pursuing, you'll have the desire and momentum to keep going, rather than cave in, in the face of obstacles.

For example, it took my brother Edward Hirsch 10 years to get his first book of poetry in print with a major publisher. Then, it’s very first week on the shelves, the book was trashed by a reviewer on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. This beginning was ominous, but in some ways, fortuitous. Having survived a treacherous review early on, Hirsch now is much less afraid of what reviewers will say about his work. While he still (obviously) prefers praise, he also knows that he can survive the criticism.

That "failure" taught him another important lesson: compassion. He's well-known among his writing colleagues for his generosity toward their work. Even when he criticizes them publicly, he never does so in the mean-spirited way that he has been attacked.

Failure can be a genuine springboard to success if you allow yourself to learn the lessons it has to teach. You can begin that process by understanding some of the more common reasons failures occur and by learning from the experience of others who have used their defeats to grow and succeed.