Subconsciously I knew failure was the key to success—even when it sucked.
I was following John C. Maxwell’s “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward,” theory far longer than I actually understood it. If you went back and told my highschool self who had just flunked for the second time “each failure is an opportunity,” he probably would have hit you (okay, not that aggressive but you get my point). Meanwhile, the Riccardo today is going to write an entire LinkedIn article section dedicated to that advice.
Each Failure Is An Opportunity
Over the last few months I’ve taken to airing out my dirty laundry when it comes to my previous failures. I was held back in highschool (twice), I burned out of my career (once, but almost twice), and now I’m about to share all the failures that happened in between.
If you’ve read about the first time I burned out in my career (not my almost restaurateur era, before that), you’ll know I experienced a big failure that led me to a summer of planning my future back in Italy. If I hadn’t failed at coping with the pressure of my first job in infrastructure and its draining hours, I probably would have never been able to experience the next series of failures. If I was successful in that position, I may have put off getting my MBA indefinitely.
Do you remember the stress of applying to post-secondary schools? And, do you remember the panic of checking the mailbox for that acceptance or rejection letter? I received not one, not two, but three perfectly sealed, rejection letters from my North American schools of choice for my MBA. University of Virginia Darden School of Business, Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics—they all hurt but by the third one, my confidence was at an all-time low. Retrospectively, I can say with certainty that these failures were actually a course correction that set me up for future success. If I had gotten into any of those American schools, I would not be where I am today in my career—but we will get to that.
I was determined to leave Italy and move to North America for my MBA regardless and quickly accepted the offer from the Ivey Business School at Western University. By all means, Ivey Business School at Western University would make a great first choice option, offering a transformative education—and for me, they offered something just as important: A work Visa.
As the program came to an end, I watched the majority of my classmates land jobs in investment banking and consulting. They were accepted by the top, most prestigious firms of the country and I was sat feeling sorry for myself. The original plan was to:
- Get into a North American school
- Earn my MBA
- Stay in North America and switch industries ( I needed to get out of infrastructure)
Well the latter did not happen—I had failed again. After several interviews with various firms, I ended up getting a job with the Government of Ontario, a position that didn’t use a spec of information I had just spent $90K learning in business school. My grand plan of investment consulting was shut down. But alas, I was in North America and going to embrace that opportunity. It took several years to realize getting rejected from those firms was the best thing to happen to my career. The opportunities were right there in front of me, I just needed to work hard and start to embrace them. What might have felt like a failure at the time, in the grand scheme, was an absolute win.
A couple years into my career (and living in North America) SNC-Lavalin was hiring—they needed someone with government experience. Me. They wanted someone with hands-on experience. I had an engineering degree. And an MBA would be a strong asset. Finally, it was being put to use. I was the right candidate because of my many failures to date.
While I will spare you the time of walking through my many failures since starting with SNC-Lavalin, just know they all lead to me being exactly where I am right now. Actually, I find I don’t even label use the language or label failures anymore. Everything is just a new opportunity—and my career is full of opportunities (that sounds a lot better than full of failures, doesn’t it?).
A Cheesy Sport Analogy That Actually Holds Up
Failure is inevitable, yet do not diminish the success of your outcome. Baseball players can fail at their sport 70 percent of the time and still make it in the Hall of Fame. Many researchers have studied why athletes experience slumps throughout their career and often come to the same conclusion: A lack of confidence. If you reflect on your career, my guess is that you’ll discover a strong correlation during your most confident times and your professional success. But the same is true viceversa. However, the longer the slump is, the lower your confidence becomes and the harder it is to break. It’s a vicious circle.
So how do baseball players snap out of it? End their slump? Regain their confidence? They may need additional batting practice, help from their hitting coach; they may need to change up their mechanics or even switch bats. At their lowest, baseball players begin working their hardest and trust the process. Baseball players going through slumps is nothing new—in fact, it’s arguably more normalized in this sport than any other context. Baseball players and coaches can look at the process of hundreds of other players who have gone through slumps and came out the otherside. Though it may feel like a waste of time at times, players must apply the same steps and patience can be applied. Guaranteed they will get out of their slump, and guaranteed they will go through another.
The same logic can be applied for entrepreneurs. They often have three failed businesses under their first successful one. Were the first three businesses a waste of time? Not at all. They are the reason why the fourth worked. The process ultimately led to their success.
If you don’t love sports analogies, sorry you’ll have muster through because years of playing and coaching soccer makes this the go-to for me to articulate my thinking. There are times when your career might feel like playing soccer but never having the ball passed in your direction. Though you, as the player running up and down the field, have an apparent purpose, you may feel times of insignificance or even failure. But eventually, the goal is kicked and you realize, your act of running took the other team’s player away from the ball, allowing your teammate to score.
In your career and/or company, when you focus purely on what you are doing, you may not understand your significance in the bigger picture. The player who scored the goal may get the glory in the moment, your perseverance benefits the team as a whole—and from my experience, will benefit your own career in the long run.
It’s only been in the last couple of years that I fully connected the dots: Your corporation is a team. Of course I’ve seen the inspirational “team work makes the dream work” posters hung on various walls for decades, but didn’t think anything of it. Now I understand that even when I am not part of the scoring, I am part of the win. When you become a team player over focusing on your own advancement, you will advance the team, company and secure your own advancement. I owe my emotional intelligence work to this recent realization, but that’s a topic for another time.
Throughout your career, you will experience being the soccer player running up and down the field and being the player who scores. You will be the baseball player in a slump and the player on a hitting streak. Maintaining your confidence while running seemingly aimlessly, will ensure you’re ready when the shot opens and the ball is passed your way.
Sometimes Losing Can Make You Win
When it is written in black and white, this concept can feel definitive–it’s when it comes to practicing the learning in everyday life when things become difficult. All we talked about today can feel like common sense after the fact, but not so much when you’re in the thick of it. So, reminder to self: Sometimes losing can make you win.
If you’re looking to get into these professional development conversations a little deeper, I have three reading recommendations for you:
- Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull
- Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim, Renée A. Mauborgne
- Failing Forward, John C. Maxwell
Also feel free to check out my 2021 reading list recommendations and 2022 reading list recommendations.