by Chris Cloud

We’ve been focused on ‘maximizing BAM success factors‘ recently on The BAM Review blog. However, we believe that ‘utilizing BAM failure’ is just as important – we can learn a lot about success from failure. Business consultant and guest author Chris Cloud introduces this new series on Learning from BAM Failure.

Failure is Not the Enemy

If there’s one thing we know, it’s that we’re going to fail at something.

There’s massive, catastrophic failure, and then there’s micro-failure. People fail classes, fail at sports, fail at dating relationships. There’s ministry failure. There’s failure to live up to our values.

Failure might be small, like a bad kick of the ball when the net was wide open, or it might be as big as going out of business. Sometimes business relationships fail. Sometimes a product launch fails, or your great idea never gets off the ground. Failure is all around us, and it’s definitely a part of life.

There’s a tendency, especially in business, to think of failure as the enemy.

But what if we looked at failure a different way? What if saw it as a necessary element of the growth process?

Choose Your Failure-related Goal

Facebook’s motto during their early days was “move fast and break things.”

As a startup, they knew they had to innovate quickly, and a necessary component of rapid innovation is a high likelihood of failure. They knew they were going to break things. But even when things broke, they knew they didn’t want to be paralyzed by failure, or the fear of failure. They wanted to get up quickly when they hit the dirt, wanted to learn from it, and keep moving onto the next thing.

I’ve been a lifelong snowboarder. As I’ve got ready to hit the slopes around the world, I’ve often overheard beginners brag to each other. They’ll say something like, “I went out yesterday and didn’t fall even once!”

Some people’s goal is not to fall.  Read more