Failure needs a serious rethink.

Of all that is truly upside-down and turned inside-out in this world, that we discourage and punish failure is a travesty of egregious proportions.

As long as failure is a bad thing involving shame, punishment, and other negative responses, we will become increasingly cautious, politically correct, and refuse to make bold decisions.

Failure needs to be reframed as learning. If we learned something from every mistake, we would be making needed adjustments sooner and more often. 

If failure were not where a particular line of action ended, but merely where it changed course, we would be achieving far more of what we planned and doing so far sooner.

Not only that, but the learning and adjustments involved would be taking us down roads toward discoveries and accomplishments that we previously had never dreamed of.

The journey that welcomes failure and transforms it into learning may be an uncomfortable one, but it is one we avoid only to our own detriment.

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Have we become overly risk-averse?

One has to wonder.

That was a devastating and frightening near-miss with total disaster that our economy experienced a few years ago. And we don’t seem to have recovered yet.

We are sitting on our wallets, postponing investments, and not hiring.

We need to find ways, though, to take the initiative and create opportunities where none may yet exist.

Easier said than done.

Hence Claudia and my discussion this week suggesting that we need to make the creating of our own opportunities a New Year’s resolution.

We cannot afford to wait around for someone else to jump start the economy.

Can you?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

One of the great self-defeating strategies of team building is the practice of culling resumes with numeric and search engine based criteria.

Thousands of talented, appropriate and possibly “best fit” candidates are never met, because their resumes were thrown in the trash based on missing “key words”, arbitrary experience requirements, and other impersonal and unhuman criteria.

In this week’s show, Claudia discuss the need to build teams rather than fill job openings.

The annual “All-Star” games in many team sports made up of the best players from all the teams, do not result in the two best teams.

The order is important. We need thriving teams in order to function at the level necessary to create a way out of our economic doldrums.

A job opening is merely the existing set of tasks that the former employee did. It does not consider what might be possible given what the new hire brings to the table.

The question is, will you ever know? You may have just thrown the most promising resume in the trash because it showed six years of experience instead of seven.

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Far too many of us are waiting for the economy improve before we make important decisions and commitments of our own.

I suggest this is the case because most of us are waiting until we know it is safe to go back to doing things the way we did before our economy’s near collapse and this extended recession.

I am almost certain that the only viable way forward will not be found in going backwards. In fact, business may never be successfully done again the way it was before 2008.

To move forward aggressively and responsibly, though, we need to get our thinking out of the rigid box that limits us to the values, methods and means of the past.

We need new perspectives, new frames of reference, and new approaches.

In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss making one of our “Bold Resolutions” for the new year to think outside the box.

Not crazy, impulsive, rash thinking. But creative, non-linear, and proactive thinking.

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Doesn’t it seem like everyone is waiting? Waiting for the economy to improve before making important decisions.

The problem with everyone waiting is that leaves no one taking actions that might stimulate the economy.

No one wants to take the first step, which, while understandable, leaves open the possibility (which is currently being realized) that no first steps are being taken.

This week Claudia and I begin a new series entitled Bold Resolutions for the New Year.

Let’s use the tool of setting New Year’s resolutions as a means for taking the initiative, making some decisions, and taking concrete action… even if it seems like we’re the only ones.

How can we be bold without being rash or impulsive?

We certainly don’t want to repeat the mistakes that landed us in the economic mess of the past several years!

Are there ways to be both bold and responsible?

Bold Resolutions for the New Year
Week #1: Too Much Fear, Caution, and Passivity
Week #2: Think Outside the Box
Week #3: Build a Team, Not Fill a Job
Week #4: Create Your Own Opportunities
Week #5: Rethink Failure

Listen in.