The Power of Failure

Reflecting on all the decisions that you’ve made as a leader, what has helped you the most, to be successful through the decision making process?

The biggest things that have helped me the most is failing, I think. Again, I’ve been lucky enough to have some successes in my career. But I can look at those moments and say, those are great moments, winning awards, or getting promotions and achieving goals really early. You don’t learn a lot in those moments. You learn that whatever you did worked, and you kind of forget about it. But there’s a chemical thing in your brain where in moments of duress, you remember that a lot more, like it gets stamped in there, like branded in there, like a cattle brand. And those are moments of failure.

I think, when I was exited from my first CMO gig, pretty unexpectedly, it was a traumatic incident for me, because I didn’t expect it. But two, I found myself on the train coming home at 9:30 in the morning after getting exited from the building. And I was like…

Does that mean getting fired or laid off? What does that mean?

Not fired, want to make sure that. Getting laid off, they’re like, “Hey, Eric, your role is no longer needed at this company.” I was like, “How are you not going to need a CMO? Like, this is ridiculous”. And they’re like, “Hey, we already made the decision. Here’s your exit papers, here’s your severance,” all that good stuff.

But it’s in those moments that you are forced to reprioritize the decisions that you made in an effort to maybe not make those decisions again in the future, or maybe navigate them differently, or maybe remember them when you’re faced with another decision that’s really tough and say, hmm like, “I remember how this felt, maybe I’m not going to make this decision again.”

It’s about touching the fire and getting burned and knowing you probably shouldn’t touch the fire again. I think that helps with my decision making quite a bit. It’s not winning, it’s failing. So that’s why I encourage failure. I encourage you to understand your shortcomings, to understand where you failed. And that’s why I always say to my recruiters, when you hire, I don’t want someone with a perfect track record. I want someone that’s lost, because then they know what’s at stake. They know what’s at stake. They know what decisions they regret, the decisions they know have been mistakes, and they know how to make better decisions when they’re with me.