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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ozan Varol
Read between
June 22 - August 3, 2021
THE “FAIL FAST, fail often, fail forward” mantra
FailCon,
“Putting the Fun in Funeral.”
A moratorium on failure is a moratorium on progress.
culpability
squidding.
“speckling”
red RTV,
“intelligent failures.”
vanity
“Elon had lost all his money, but this was more than his fortune at stake—it was his credibility.”
To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, there’s a difference between a single failure and final defeat.34 A single failure, as SpaceX’s story illustrates, can be the beginning, not the end.
The opening doesn’t have to be grand, as long as the finale is.
Breakthroughs are often evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Science weaves from failure to failure, with each version better than the one that came before. From a scientific perspective, failure isn’t a roadblock. It’s a portal to progress.
If we ask a better question than the ones asked before, that’s a contribution, even if the answers elude us.
Focusing on outputs leads us astray because good decisions can lead to bad outcomes. In conditions of uncertainty, outcomes aren’t completely within your control.
If we engage in resulting, we reward bad decisions that lead to good outcomes. Conversely, we change good decisions merely because they produced a bad outcome.
The goal, then, is to focus on the variables you can control—the inputs—instead of the outputs. You should ask, “What went wrong with this failure?” and if the inputs need fixing, you should fix them. But this question isn’t enough. You must also ask, “What went right with this failure?” You should retain the good-quality decisions, even if they produced a failure.
Watch the ball as long as you can, Sharapova cautions, and zero in on the inputs. By taking the pressure off the outcome, you get better at your craft. Success becomes a consequence, not the goal.
“What would you do even if you knew that you might very well fail? What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?”
cringe.
Every time you make a mistake, every time you fail at something, you should throw your arms in the air and say, “How fascinating!”51
petulant
Better teams were making more mistakes, not less.
better teams weren’t making more mistakes. Instead, they were simply reporting more mistakes. The teams that had a climate of openness—where the staff felt safe to discuss mistakes—performed better because employees were more willing to share failures and actively work to reduce them.
Psychological safety means, in Edmondson’s words, “no one will be punished or humiliated for errors, questions, or requests for help, in the service of reaching ambitious performance goals.”
The worst-performing teams—those that were in most need of improvement—were also the least likely to report errors.
Reward excellent failures, punish mediocre successes,”
must be a clear commitment to supporting intelligent failure and well-intentioned risk taking. People must know that intelligent failure is necessary for future success, that they won’t be punished for it, and that their careers won’t be ended for it.
blunders,
This is why I started the “Famous Failures” podcast,
one caveat. You must establish your competence before revealing your failures. Otherwise, you risk damaging your credibility and coming across as a mess—and not a beautiful one.76
balmy
As Bill Gates says, success is “a lousy teacher” because it “seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
participants against each other in a typing contest involving two periods separated by a short break.38 During the break, participants were told they were either far behind (−50 points), slightly behind (−1 point), tied, or slightly ahead (+1 point). The participants who believed they were slightly behind exerted significantly more effort than all the other participants in the second period.
portend
masquerade
Near misses lead people to take unwise risks. Rather than urgency, near misses create complacency.
egregious
The next time you’re tempted to start basking in the glory of your success while admiring the scoreboard, stop and pause for a moment. Ask yourself, What went wrong with this success? What role did luck, opportunity, and privilege play? What can I learn from it? If we don’t ask these questions, luck will eventually run its course, and the near misses will catch up with us.
warts
The Premortem
“I wish I knew where I was going to die, and then I’d never go there.”60 This approach is called a premortem.
Backcasting works backward from a desired outcome. A premortem works backward from an undesired outcome. It forces you to think about what could go wrong before you act.
FMEA: Failure Mode Efficacy Analysis
I’m not a morning person. To me, sunrises feel as energizing as a root canal.
risk homeostasis.
Moral hazard is another name.
trod
wither.
When success brings complacency
