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My First Big Failure and What It Meant …

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about my first big failure and what it meant

When I was in my 20s, I lost my job. The guy who said good-bye, my boss, did it in the nicest way. He talked about territory restructuring and other changes. The company gave me a lovely package so that I could move back to my home in Chicago. I might have tried to believe that I had no part in what happened, but in my heart I knew my job was gone because of nonperformance.

It was the first time I had failed at anything.

I’m not going to tell it was fun or that I learned a lesson then that changed my life. It wasn’t and I didn’t.

It took me a long time to even make sense of it. I was a winner, always successful. How was it that I totally missed on this one? How was it that I couldn’t seem to find a way to get to the winning? How did I get myself lost in a spiral of unhappiness that made every small loss lead to another slightly bigger one? What was I not doing or seeing?

Really I was blind to one HUGE thing.

It was the wrong job for me.

How hard I’d tried to fit myself into a space that didn’t fit me.

I bent and twisted, smashed and squished, curled and flattened, until I was walking in circles without direction. All the time that I was doing that, I was sure that my lack of performance was the problem — it was only a symptom. The problem was that I was trying to reconfigure myself to fit a job I’d taken.

We live in a time finding the right job may seem a challenge, but living in the wrong one still isn’t the answer.

Ever wonder what you bring to the world? … where you belong?

Look at what you’ve always done well, what problems you’ve always solved for other people, the things you do that other folks rely on. You’ve been successful before. Look inside those successes. You’ll find the answers have always been there.

I can say it’s so.
I know.
I’ve lived it.

All that my first big failure meant was that wasn’t MY path to change the world.

Be irresistible.

Liz's Signature

Have Failure of the Imagination

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Plan B No–Fail Fast and Move On

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

The meeting had just started. We were talking to the company’s major owner-partner. We had laid out the framework of how we would turn the company around. The partner turned to the company president and said, “And do you have a Plan B, in case this doesn’t work?”

I said, “If you don’t mind . . . ” and asked if I might edit his question. We knew each other well, and so he said, “Sure.”

My new version was, “Is the plan flexible enough that if you find one or more parts not working, you can adjust your plan and keep moving forward?”

. . .

After the meeting, the owner-partner queried what my thinking was in editing his question. I said that it was two-fold: that how he thought affected our thinking and that to talk of Plan Bs at that juncture was to give permission to fail at Plan A before we’d even tried to make it work.

I really don’t like assumptions that Plan A has a chance of failing. I really don’t like Plan Bs for that reason. I don’t mind failures. I like to see them coming, fail fast, and move on.

Failure of Imagination

I actually seek out failures of imagination. I have them on purpose often. This is not a literal “my imagination does not work” kind of thing. It is my imagination conjuring all kinds of failure situations.

I use imagined failures to get ideas for writing and for all kinds of problem solving. Here are a variety of situatons and ways you might use failures of imagination to bring you to a stronger outcome.

Getting Ideas for Writing

Ask questions such as these.

    Personal Failures as Ideas
    What would I not be good at?
    What do I wish I had done differently?
    What invention do I wish I had because I keep failing at something?
    What college course could I teach based on my failures?
    What failure do I hope my kids never have?
    What failures turned out to be the best things that ever happened to me?

    Questioning Other Folks’ Possible Failures
    Why is this person not qualified to teach, say, or do this?
    What would happen if I actually tried this?
    Where’s the flaw in this argument?
    What information is missing from this report?
    What failures are in the famous person’s past?
    How many failures preceeded this invention?
    How long before this gadget breaks down?

Designing a Process

Ask questions such as these.

    Where is the process likely to break down or jam up?
    Where is the step we missed, the piece we forgot?
    How have we messed up this kind of process before?
    What if we have to do everything faster, where will we look to speed things up?
    Where’s the pin that we could pull to make the whole process fall apart?
    What part of this process could fail and not be noticed by anyone but us?

On an Interview or With a Client

Ask questions such as these.

    What are the most difficult parts of this job?
    What worries you most that someone might get wrong?
    What kind of miscommunications happen?
    How do you define failure and success?
    What do your vendors do that drives you bonkers?
    What sort of sample might I do to make sure we’re shooting at the same target?

On Your Brand Identity

Ask questions such as these.

    What situations cause me to forget my goals?
    When do my weaknesses tend to take control?
    How might I use this failure to strengthen my brand or a relationship?
    If I failed at this, what would happen?

On Promoting Your Blog

Ask questions such as these.

    Have I failed to capture my own attention?
    Have other posts like this one failed to gain readers? Why was that?
    Does this page say what I think it does?
    Will my page fail to load for my readers?
    What problems might my readers see here?
    What would make me click off this page quickly?
    If this weren’t my article, would I pass right by it?
    Have I read this post six other places before?

Positive Negatives

No need to jump to the negatives. Instead, use them to keep your life positive. The trick is not to focus on the unproductive, but to seek out unwanted outcomes to find fun, positive ways to avoid them. Think of imagining failures as building a safety net for the tight rope walk that is your brand and your business.

Having a failure of imagination can be a fantastic resource for protecting your business. It’s so much more fun than working out a Plan B that, if you think about it, could easily have the same failure opportunities as Plan A does.

Can you have a failure of imagination? Are you positive or negative?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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