Failure: The Secret to Success
Honda has produced a series of short ‘documentaries’ promoting Honda innovation. I’m usually quite critical about this kind marketing content masquerading as entertainment, but having watched two so far, I can say they are well produced, engaging, and only tangentially talk about Honda.
This one is about failure. I don’t think about failure much, even though some might consider that I’ve been around it quite a bit. Many companies that I’ve worked for didn’t make it, or had to cut back during hard times, but I never thought of them as failures. With each one, I often had great results with my piece of the company puzzle, met brilliant and talented people, and learned a hell of a lot. For me personally, that’s a success.
Projects come and go. I try and make sure that whatever I spend my time on is going to give me a great experience, draw on my strengths and knowledge, and give me new challenges to learn from. If it doesn’t work out, I’m very disappointed, but I take what I’ve learned to the next opportunity.
Oh, and it needs to pay the mortgage. Can’t forget that one.
From Salon (login or adroll required) via Neelakantan at Interim Thoughts.
If you are an older subscirber, please update your RSS feed, or if you haven’t yet, subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed. Don’t know what RSS is? Check this out for an explanation of RSS.