Embracing failure and achieving success

This weekend saw major disruption caused by an update from Crowdstrike‘s software which many companies use to manage security on Window’s computers. My heart goes out to the project managers and developers that are trying to resolve this.

I can imagine how the Crowdstrike problem could have unfolded. Someone needed to finish an update before going on their annual leave and didn’t have time to put it through QA or test it in a staging environment. Then through a series of unfortunate coincidences the perfect storm emerges and we have an IT meltdown.

Good practice of testing in an isolated staging system and slowly rolling out a change would have help mitigate this risk. But sometimes despite the best practice these things just happen. What counts both personally and corporately is not that we mess up but how we respond to that mess.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in deployments. From forgetting a key stakeholder in a communication or not arranging support for the day after a deployment with the right vendors. But it’s in going through these problems and finding a solution  that you learn how to do it better. There is so much to learn and each project I am learning something. Hopefully making less mistakes and becoming the best version of myself.

Here are the three most important things I think you must have to deal with failure.

1. Resilience – Going through tough times

I really like what Jensen Huang said to the graduates at Stanford university:

“People with high expectations have very low resilience ……. and unfortunately resilience matters in success”…. “Greatness comes out of character, and character is NOT formed out of smart people it is formed out of people who have suffered.”

Jensen Huang – CEO Nvidia

Anything worthwhile comes out of some adversity, pain or suffering. Success is about persevering through adversity and finding a solution. Whether it’s an international IT incident or a small local project.

2. Perseverance – Failing often

Whatever you think about Elon Musk he has made some spectacular failures but has each time managed to learn from his mistakes and taken it to the next level.

From negative reviews at PayPal in 1999 to rocket explosions at Space X in 2008, to near bankruptcy with Tesla he has somehow learned from his mistakes and figured out where to improve.

3. Wisdom to figure out where you need to improve.

Failure is a great opportunity to learn and its only by going through the dark days what we understand the value of what we can achieve. I like the way Ed Sheeran sums it up when he shares about how he had to teach himself how to sing, perform and write songs. It was only through going through profound failures that he is able to be the successful singer song writer today.

Conclusion

Failures like the Crowdstrike incident this weekend are just part of the reality of our technology driven society. As Jensen Huang encourages we need to build character by going through pain and suffering and developing resilience in order to succeed. Elon Musk has achieved some amazing technology breakthroughs but also some spectacular failures. None of which have discouraged him from moving forward. Equally Ed Sheeran shares how failure has made him successful and driven himself to be the best version of himself.

It’s out of these dark days and challenges that we can face in our careers that we build resilience and understand perseverance to get through the pain and the suffering to get to success.

Whatever you are facing this week you can turn it in to a something positive, build resilience and perseverance and succeed in whatever you enjoy doing and are passionate about.