Achieving success

When considering performance, there is typically more focus on failure than there is on success. Failures are often noticeable, well-remembered one-time events that generate high emotions and can affect many people.  There is the idea that teams learn from our mistakes and failures, and that in order to improve teams must fail publicly and painfully. It is believed that significant successes must somehow be rooted in overcoming past misfortunes and failures.

Success can be loud and come with a lot of fanfare as well, but the fanfare of success tends to fade faster.  New challenges pop up and emotions go away quickly because the team must get back to work, as success tends to bring in more work and generate additional challenges.  

As a result, success appears to play a smaller role in overall evaluation than failure.  That is both unfortunate and counter-productive.  

It is unfortunate, because failures are not necessarily what makes us learn and improve going forward. While occasionally there is learning that is an outcome of failure, the same learning can also happen without experiencing the fail.  A lot of failures are unavoidable, but nevertheless result in blame (or self-blame) and reduce motivation.

Focus on failures is also counter-productive, because failure is hardly ever the enemy. Failures come from experiments, from aspiring to reach farther, from ambition.  Statistically, it takes a number of failures to achieve significant success.  Without these failures, the success is either impossible, or a lot less likely.

Success is not the opposite of failure, rather, it is a significantly different happening.  Success often comes with more work and more responsibility, creates additional challenges, and pushes the team to work harder.  Success requires active learning and deliberate practice, and there is a need to learn still more to handle challenges brought on by the achievement.  Success encourages ambition and experimenting, and boosts motivation.

Success is the main driver of future success. It is time to focus more on success, and less on failure, when considering team performance.