Rewarding a Good Failure More than a Bad Success: Why Winning the 1.5 Billion Dollar Powerball Wouldn’t Have Solved Your Problems

Good Failure Vs. Bad Success

You may be wondering what I mean when I say “good failure” and “bad success.” These terms can feel like oxymorons, because who doesn’t want to succeed, and who wants to fail. We often want to reward success, no matter what the reason, and punish the failures, no matter the reason. I’m sure you know by now I am going to tell you this is all wrong.

To define a good failure it is important to first talk about a bad success. A bad success is when someone takes a risk that is poorly conceived, not well researched, with a high chance of negative consequences, and then through no doing of theirs accidentally succeeds. The 1.5 billion Powerball is the perfect example of rewarding a bad success.

The individuals who got the jackpot had no talents, or plan that allowed them to succeed, they simply got lucky to pick a winning ticket. If you look at the chances of the lotteries, it is an incredibly poor decision to play the lotto. The risk vs reward is huge. You are virtually guaranteed to waste that money.

Bad Success Is No Understanding of What To Do With It

I bring up the lottery because looking at past lottery winners, how many of them are doing alright today. More than 70% of past lottery winners are currently bankrupt, and the percentage increases with the size of the jackpot. This is primarily due to the fact that these individuals have no understanding of what to do with the unwarranted success they achieve. It is a bad success, and they have better than 70% chance of going bankrupt if they get “lucky” and hit the jackpot.

Good Failure Has High Reward to Risk Ratio

Now what about a good failure? A good failure is a failure that was well thought out, extensively researched, had a high reward to risk ratio, and through no major fault of the person who failed, something happened to prevent success. An example of this would be an employee of a marketing firm who created an ad for a New York financial magazine featuring an Arab man in between the twin towers praying, that was scheduled to run on 9/12/2001. This add was for an investment firm who had just purchased significant holdings in the middle east and was trying to advertise to its investors and potential investors, the newfound wealth they were going to acquire.

The team who had created the ad had done their research, planned out the add, had seen the demographics of their particular clients, and believed with good reason that this add would be attractive to their investors. Needless to say the add did not run on the day that it was scheduled, and the $5,000+ that the marketing firm had received for creating the add was wasted. Through no fault of the marketing firm, and no fault of the employee who created the add with incredible effort and diligence, the add wound up being a waste.

In this second instance, the investment firm that hired the marketing firm did the wrong thing, they fired the marketing firm and tried to take them to court to get their money back. The marketing firm ended up paying the $5,000 back to the investment firm, and then volunteered to do a new add pro-bono for the investment firms biggest competitor.

Instead of firing the designer that created the add in the first place, the marketing firm put him in charge of creating the add for the competitor, paid him his full salary, plus a bonus for the pro-bono add, and empowered the employee who had done his work excellently to continue to do great work for the company. The marketing firm ended up getting a contract with the second company, and the designer who created both adds, he wound up managing the account for what would grow to be a multimillion dollar account with the new investment firm, that started with his first pro-bono add he created.

Empowering People to Try Things and Learn from Mistakes

Empowering your people to try things, to fail correctly, to learn from their mistakes and get better, creates a totally different culture within a company. Rewarding an employee for an innovative, good failure, the same way you would for an innovative, good success, provides the impetus and inspiration that keeps your people creative.

Pay attention to how your employees work, not just the results, because I would rather have someone who is willing to try something new, fail well, and try something new again. Those are the people who come up with that million dollar idea, and I would rather have them do that with me, than do it with someone else.

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“The key to success is doing it, every day, no matter what, one day at a time.

What did you do today?”

Jeremy Larsen
Business Development and Operations Manager
Coherence Associates Inc.