This is the ugly side of the Innovation. Failure. I am yet to see a success which wasn’t preceded with failure(s). A failure of an Idea can have many effects
- Disappointment
- Hurts ego
- Eats up self-confidence
- Pushes towards self-doubt
- Increases indifference or unwillingness
It is far too easy to just say that we should learn from failures. We all learn from mistakes. Problem is how to avoid other effects. I am not calling then side-effects. Often they are the major effects.
I spoke about baby steps in an earlier post. That is a good means to avoid a big failure. But if you are facing one, how to counter it? I would suggest two approaches. You can use either or both.
Fogging
If you find a scapegoat to blame the failure, you won’t feel as disappointed. Before you get me wrong here, let me elaborate. I am not asking you to be escapist. The scapegoat can be yourself too. The idea is to find what lead to the failure. Did you rush in? Not enough skills? lack of resources (time, money, energy)? This way you create a fog between yourself and failure. The attempt is to associate failure to a cause. This will be productive too as you have already discovered the cause of failure. You know what to do next.
Branching
What you may also do is something like branching. Even if your idea failed but you might have suceeded in solving some smaller problems that were part of the complete solution you were trying. I suggest you pick them up and try to visualize if they can be used in a different context. Even a disassembled jet is worth thousands if not millions.
