About failure. Whether you're a CEO of a small business, or you're just the CEO of you, I'm going to invite you to have a look at failure, and see if you can do some, regularly! I assert that if you're not failing, on a fairly regular basis, you're probably not taking enough chances.

Consider that failure is the only true indicator that the groundwork for success is present. Suppose that you regularly set yourself goals for success and you hit some, fail at others. You can consider that you're doing your job brilliantly. You're accepting the reward of success and the risk of failure. And what is it that often stops us from accepting the reward of success? You guessed it.

Failure takes place when you reach for the sky, and you don't get it. The poet Robert Browning put it nicely - "Man's reach should exceed man's grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

Failure means:

1. You tried to accomplish a specific result and you were unsuccessful;
2. You're no good, and you always knew it!
3. You may be setting your goals high enough so that you can have some big achievements, and are prepared to risk failure now and again.
4. You made a rotten judgment and now you're paying the price.

Why do we avoid failure? Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Charles Schultz's Snoopy observed - "Pain Hurts!" Who wants it?! Not Snoopy, nor you and I. But, if failure isn't possible, then probably neither is success!!!

Here's a recommendation - accept your job as CEO (of your business or of you) as someone who makes big commitments and brings them to conclusion. Failure is just one of the two possible results - right, success is the other. In a curious and perverse way, failure is a measure of the commitments you've made and the boldness with which you made them. If success is part of your job, then so is failure. It comes on the dinner.

What about risk - should we avoid it, minimize it, or embrace it? What is risk? On one hand, risk is what we avoid because it includes failure and pain. On the other, risk goes with reward - like the bodybuilder who says "no pain, no gain." The trick on evaluating business or personal risk is to understand clearly what the upside reward and downside risk really are. Then decide what the probabilities of each might be. What are the chances that the game you have in mind could go south? And finally, how much do you want the upside, and could you live with the downside if it came to pass?

I haven't spent much time with the more obvious use of failure - learning from mistakes. Maybe you had to do something to discover that it would never work. OK, that's learning from mistakes. Probably, however, the rest of your failures and mine come because we played the probabilities, and it just didn't work out this time.

Recommendation:

Set aside one hour today to set some serious goals for yourself. You know, those goals you've been planning to get around to for a long time! There are some goals where, if you don't achieve them, nothing happens. There are some others, goals that imply risk and reward. If you venture, you may gain, or lose. If you want the upside strongly enough, and can live with the downside, that may be an acceptable risk.

If you'd like to have a conversation about this, send me an email - subject line: Failure and Risk. And if goal-setting is an issue for you, email me for MVG - a handy tool for setting Mission, Vision and Goals for CEO's, Owners and just plain human beings!