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Arianna Huffington and Oprah Winfrey among founders who say failures are stepping stones to success
FLKRMany of America's most spectacularly successful founders agree that their past failures were the making of them. Entrepreneurs such as Snapchat’s cofounder Evan Spiegel, Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia and Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington all failed miserably before they made it. Even entrepreneurs in the entertainment business, where you’re only as good as your last hit, such as Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, and Reese Witherspoon have hugely positive things to say about their many failed endeavors.
These women and men offer us a new perspective: that experiencing failure does not need to define someone as 'a failure.' In fact, when we view our own failures as shameful blots to be expunged, rather than extraordinary lessons in what to do differently next time, we are missing out on a huge potential for growth and reward.
Amy C. Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, believes strong leadership can build a learning culture—one in which failures large and small are consistently reported and deeply analyzed, and opportunities to experiment are proactively sought. We should, she says, recognize that failure is inevitable in today’s complex work environment. Edmondson's study advocates reducing the stigma of failure. She cites the scientist Eli Lilly who holds“failure parties” to honor intelligent, high-quality experiments that fail to achieve the desired results.
What does failure actually mean to you?
For me, failure simply means that I set myself an intention which I was not able to live up to, a commitment which I did not keep, or a goal that I did not achieve.
The only sure-fire way I know to completely avoid failure is to never make commitments, never set intentions and never state your goals.
A life without failure is a life without striving. Of course, no one knowingly aims for failure. We hope for success. But, unless what we're striving for is so easily within our grasp that reaching for it wouldn't qualify as striving, we inevitably need to fail multiple times in order to succeed. This is true of every area of endeavor, from learning a new skill to launching a new company; from committing to being a good friend to becoming an inspiring leader.
Arianna Huffington failed first as an author and next as a politician. Her book was rejected by 36 publishers and then she failed to get more than 0.55% of the vote when she ran for California governor in 2003. Today, as the founder of the Huffington Post, one of the biggest news websites in the world, and the author of a dozen books, she recalls her mother telling her as a teenager that ‘failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a stepping stone to success.' Huffington still remembers her mother's advice. 'I think she would really enjoy how many times I had let myself fail along the way.'
Airbnb is currently valued at $25.5 billion. But in 2008 its co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia had “launched” multiple times. The pair were turned down for funding and their site wasn't getting any traction. racking up tens of thousands of dollars in personal credit card debt for Brian and Jo.
Likewise, Snapchat’s co-founder Evan Spiegel, now one of the world's youngest billionaires was a serial failure at Stanford University. As an undergraduate his girlfriend had dumped him, his fraternity chapter had been kicked off campus, and the only user of his first company was his mother.
If You’ve Never Failed At Something, Success Isn't As Sweet
The thing is, when you don’t fail, you don’t allow yourself to become stronger in that process, resulting in the kind of resilience which is universally understood to be core to being a successful leader
The actor Reese Witherspoon, who is also an acclaimed producer and entrepreneur has twice been named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world (in 2006 and 2015.) Today she shares on her Instagram feed how failure and 'rejection can really be a great help in our lives.' Retelling how when she was starting out 'I was always considered to something. Too short. Too feisty. Too energetic. I once got told I seemed too smart to play a young female character. I'm not gonna lie, sometimes all the rejection would hurt my feelings, I would take it personally. I definitely cried in the shower a lot in my 20’s. What I didn’t know then was: rejection teaches you perseverance and how to get tough. And you also learn ... not every path is right for you.' 'Let yourself be sad, grieve what didn’t happen for a minute but move ON. Better things are waiting for you.'
Failure Can Usefully Redirect Your Energy
J K. Rowling is the philanthropist, producer, and author best known for writing the Harry Potter series, which has sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best selling book series in history.
Rowling reveals that failure can even lead you down a path that’s way more rewarding than the one you were on before. “Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential,” she says, recalling her time as a secretary and researcher for Amnesty International, “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.”
Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", Oprah Winfrey was the richest African American of the 20th century. She believes in fully embracing failure. "It doesn’t matter how far you might rise,” Oprah Winfrey shared with Harvard students in her commencement address. “At some point, you are bound to stumble. If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher and higher, the law of averages predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”
Embracing Failure Can Make You More Relatable and Effective
As with vulnerability, which most of us see as strength when it's shown by others but mistake for weakness when it surfaces in ourselves, failure when owned as invaluable learning, makes the owner appear stronger. Arianna, Oprah, JK Rowling seem both more confident and more relatable because they're not pretending that success just happened, effortlessly.
When we're succeeding in meeting our own goals and everything's going 'right', it can be very hard to explain quite how it happened. Success is very hard to learn from or repeat.
Failure on the other hand, well, we can usually identify the various factors which made something go wrong.
Failure is much easier to learn from and avoid
Forbes estimates that Craigslist is worth at least $3 billion, making Craig Newmark, the founder who today owns at least 42% of the company, worth at least $1.3 billion. Back when Newmark was still working at IBM in Detroit, he admits to having been a real jerk. "I would correct marketing reps when they were talking to a customer. Which was really quite stupid of me, and it took me a long time to catch on that it was really stupid of me.
"I had to learn to not be a jerk," he tells Business Insider. "Nowadays, even though I'm very much still a nerd, of the old school, I can, for limited times, simulate normal social interaction. That is, I can interact as humans normally do."
Without the confidence bestowed by success, failure can be very hard for most of us to concede. I have failed many times. I have launched businesses that floundered; I have produced TV series that flopped. I have failed, in small things, several times just this past week. Should I feel ashamed, embarrassed even? After all, there is such a stigma attached to failure. That's why it's good to know that, at least according to Harvard and some of America's top founders, my failures, and yours, do not make us less able, less qualified or less alluring.
Even if you haven't yet 'made it,' I recommend proudly owning your failures. Not only will sharing with others what you've learned and how you've grown make you seem more relatable, but you will also occur as a stronger and more effective leader.
