really excited about looking for more
because I believe that if you’re always
succeeding you need to work harder and
you need to seek out greater
opportunities to fail it is only through
failure that we learn and not seeking
out those failure opportunities is like
being an athlete who smokes you’ll never
know how good you can be unless you kick
my goal is to challenge your thinking
about the value and the benefit of
seeking failure opportunities as an
educator executive coach and designer
and facilitator of leadership
development programs I have met many
enemies of failure in fact some of the
most prominent senior leaders that I
work with have a genuine disdain for the
word failure they experience failure as
something that is very negative and I
help them work through that stumbling
block because they need to to become
our journey for the next few minutes
will be to have you experience some
failure together and celebrate that will
then move to look at some historical
examples of how failure really helps
people succeed and I’ll leave you with a
challenge kind of a final assignment so
you’re ready to go
let’s start on your programs if you just
turn them to the very back page which is
blank the last two pages are blank
actually just kind of flip that over so
you can write on it get your pen out
gonna ask you to really quickly do
something they didn’t give you pens when
you walked in I was told they would I
was told they would give you fan sorry
about that okay so now some of you may
have seen this before that’s okay but on
your pages I want you to replicate
what’s on screen here this is a failed
test replicate those nine dots go ahead
just draw the nine dots on your page and
now very quickly connect those dots with
four straight lines without removing
your pen from the page okay the pen
stays on the page you connect all nine
dots I’ll give you a few seconds to do
this I’ve given some executives more
time and sometimes they work through
lunch before they they are willing to
allow me to give them the solution we’re
not going to do that now we don’t have
that kind of time okay so how many of
you have gotten the solution raise your
hand if you got answers how many of you
have seen this before raise your hand
and you still can’t get the solution all
right you know why you know why that is
it’s because our brain has this
cognitive heuristic this shortcut in our
thinking
it’s habitually form and it’s very
helpful when we see things that look
like a square we are we draw the
imaginary box you’ve heard the
expression outside the box thinking this
is where it comes from this is the
exercise that has been in
books for 50 or 60 years that led to
that phrase outside the box thinking
let’s try another one if you could just
clasp your hands like this kind of like
this okay now now just twiddle your
thumbs in one direction forward right
got it
now now twiddle your thumbs backwards
might be a little more difficult but you
can still do that rather quickly right
okay now Twitter one thumb forward and
the other one backwards do that at the
same time anybody it’s a tough one I
know it’s tough okay I have a friend who
did this his father was a his father was
a pastor and he did this for hours on
end on Sunday mornings while his father
was giving his sermon and finally after
months learned to do it okay so those
are two experiences we now share turn to
the person next to you give my high-five
yes we failed all right we have that
experience you’ve all I’m assuming
ridden a bicycle right now yet they say
if you once you learn how to ride a bike
and never forget you can always ride the
bike but do we ever talk about what it
was like to learn to ride the bike how
many of you have read a book on bike
riding and that was your first instance
of your learning process how many of you
had a lecture on here’s how you ride a
bike and that’s how you began riding the
bike
chances are you rode that bike because
you failed in your attempts to it to
learn to ride the bike you realized wow
I’m on this bike and it’s a lot
different from my tricycle because when
I go like this it doesn’t turn it just
falls over okay how many of you have
learned to drive a car same sort of
process hopefully you didn’t fall over
in the car but you had an opportunity to
drive the car at some point now I’ve
never told anyone this and my parents
are now passed on so they won’t find out
but I learned to draw
a car when I was 13 years old because my
Scoutmaster allowed the Boy Scouts to
drive his vehicle on the back 40 of this
farmers land where we were camping so by
the time I went to my driver’s ed class
I aced everything and my dad thought
well he’s a quick learner well I’d been
driving for three years that I never
told him that okay now driving the car
is something that we do kind of
pedantically in a sense we do read up
you can read a book on the on the laws
of the road and that sort of thing but
I’m gonna take us through a quick model
here this framework looks at
consciousness and competence and if we
walk around this model from bottom left
through bottom right we’re working
through a kind of a stage of learning
that takes us through failures by
definition unconscious and competences
you just don’t know what you don’t know
and then we move from there now so
that’s when you first in a car as a
young toddler you they put you in the
car seat you’re locked in and you just
get from point A to point B you know how
you got there later in life maybe six
years old you start looking at the
drivers maneuvers how to how that
steering wheel my mother used to drive
like this all the time what is that well
that’s a it’s a kind of an auto
correcting adjustment process that she
used she was a good driver but then we
saw with sort of a conscious
incompetence wow I’m watching what they
do but I know I can’t do that yet
because I can’t yet reach the pedals and
then we move from that to conscious
competence where we now can reach the
pedals and if you’re 13 like I was
you’re driving on the back 40 and it’s
kind of fun and then we move to
unconscious competence where now I don’t
even think about all the things I used
to think about set the mirrors make sure
those are right check behind me put it
into drive make sure I first turned it
on make sure the radio is just the right
and that you know I don’t think about
all that I just jump in and go until you
have an
accident and then we that’s another
story okay so there are some things that
once you learn how to drive you may need
to learn how to drive another type of
vehicle in fact there are some in this
country that use the 5-speed as an
anti-theft system it’s built in who’s
gonna steal this car they can’t even
drive it failure was clearly in this
person’s life this all happened in a
couple years time and yet he became one
of the greatest presidents of our
country failure was clearly in this
individuals experience and yet he became
one of the greatest in fact for most
people the greatest basketball player of
all time failing at something does not
make you a failure Apollo 13 in the
ninth in 1970 actually April 13th 1970
accident on board three men in space we
needed to bring those astronauts home
how to do that well you you know what
happened across the country actually
across the globe people were concerned
about this NASA had developed hundreds
of failure routines in which they were
working through over the years and were
prepared to respond to that failure IBM
computer called deep blue is before
Watson deep blue in 1997 beat the world
champion chess master Garry Kasparov at
chess in a in an official tournament how
did it do that well deep blue was
processing 200 million failure routines
per second
in order to do that so what can we do
well if we always do what we’ve always
done you’ll always get what you’ve
always got and I like Henry Ford’s
statement on this one you’ll always be
who you’ve always been so if you get
good at something and you keep doing it
that way and you’re safe you’re never
gonna fail you’re never gonna change and
you might get locked into the tyranny of
expertise the tyranny of expertise is
when you get trapped in that bottom
right quadrant where you’re
unconsciously competent and that’s all
you need to know and you’re not aware
that you’ve become unconsciously
incompetent because the world is
changing folks and there are no right
answers to the most complex problems
there are many right answers you’ve got
to know which one to pick sometimes it’s
a matter of perspective
one person’s failure is another person’s
success how will you know
well here’s here two examples and there
are dozens of examples Kellogg’s
cornflakes and three M’s post-it notes
both came from failure incidents 2008
the commencement address at Harvard
these words were mentioned now Hogwarts
and Harvard similar sorts of
a pottery instructor once stepped into
his studio at the beginning of the
course and said all of you on the right
you will be judged on the final day of
this class by the weight of the pottery
that you bring to that class if you
bring in 50 pounds of created artwork
with the clay you will get an a 40
pounds of B and so on those of you here
you will be judged on the quality of one
piece of pottery so the end of the
course came and the students all brought
their clay all of these brought pounds
of clay pounds of different pottery
pieces every one here brought one piece
these folks all spent very excruciating
time and design mode and really kind of
appreciating what that final piece could
be because it had to be perfect to be an
a these people brought in 50 different
varieties and guess where the quality
was in the end all the quality pieces
were here zero from this group they were
all here because they learned by working
the clay by having the failed attempts
they learned to create quality I found
this sign on a wall in a biology
laboratory it caught my attention do we
do that with education well one of the
things that I experienced in my work
with developing senior leaders we have
this this game that we play it’s called
ball point game it’s a game where we put
the team of leaders together and they
have to pass a ping-pong ball from a
basket to everyone
everyone else has to touch this
ping-pong ball but it has to have air
time so they can’t just hand it to the
person and they also can’t pass as a
person standing right next to them so it
takes some doing we give them about two
minutes to prepare and then we do five
rounds of two minutes and the first
round their their tie their their number
their count tends to be like two or
maybe ten and then we ask them for an
estimate how many you gonna do next
round and they’ll say oh maybe twelve
and they’ll do maybe fifteen and then we
give them a little feedback and then the
next round and next one they do five
rounds guess what how many they get of
the fifth round usually over a hundred
and at the end of that we say well if
we’d given you all that prep time two
minutes plus one minute each time is a
total of about seven minutes upfront
would you have been able to achieve over
a 100 in the final round and they all
agree no no way so the concept is let’s
take an opportunity to prepare by
failing let’s jump in and try something
with very little information initially a
little bit of planning but let’s try it
let’s experience it let’s go back to
learning to ride the bike so I said I’d
leave you with a challenge my challenge
to you is to consider failure as a true
option in Houston during Apollo 13 the
statement that was never made but it was
used in the film failure is not an
option
could only be made knowing that they
will consider hundreds of failed options
so if your concern is I want to be
successful
my suggestion is work to find the
failure opportunities I used to live in
Chicago in Chicago
there’s a political push toward boat
early boat often I’d like to build on
that sentiment I’d like to suggest that
you should fail early and fail often and
in that way you will truly be able to
succeed the assignment is for you to
talk to someone here during the lunch
break
and provide them a suggestion that you
just came up with for a personal failure
opportunity just make that an assignment
very simple but think about it because I
believe that if you do work toward
appreciating failure and celebrating
your failure you will have great success
thank you [Applause]