Monthly Archives: November 2013

5 Steps To Kicking A Twinkie Habit

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Rerun Friday – adapted from a post originally ran on The Project in December 2011. Enjoy.

I was reminded last night that success doesn’t just come to you, and it might not necessarily be about hard work and attitude – like your Dad would always say.  To often we (the collective lot of us!) want to believe success is like the lotto – at least to often we hope to get success that way – one day you don’t have success, then the next day success somehow miraculously finds you!

Sorry. Doesn’t usually work that way.

But one thing we over look is how important success is to finding success.  Here’s what I mean:

Directions for Being Successful –

Step 1: Find a little success

Step 2: Find another little success

Step 3: Find another little success

Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 each day

Step 5: You are successful

I know, directions are hard to follow for some people, so let me give you an example.  You feel like a failure at everything – job is going well (or you don’t have one), relationships suck, you’re a little soft around the middle (i.e., fat) – basically you feel like a failure, nothing is going in the right direction.  Guess what? When you wake up tomorrow you won’t magically be successful – no matter how hard you wish it, pray it, want it.  You have to find some sort of success, no matter how small.  Maybe that success is eating one less Twinkie than you did the day before – yesterday I ate 8 Twinkies – today I only ate 7!  Don’t let someone tell you that’s not a success, because tomorrow I’m only going to eat 6 and before you know it I’m going to kick this Twinkie habit!

I works with everything.  Not recruiting enough candidates for your organization, can’t get anyone to pick up the phone and talk to you – today make one more call than you did yesterday – only 1 – that is a success, because tomorrow you’re going to do that again, 1 more than the day before – small success steps until you’re just one big giant bag full of success!

People who are successful and throw it in your face suck!  They suck because they act like they’ve always been successful, but they haven’t.  It came to them a little at a time, until they could no longer feel what failure felt like.  You see success is like a drug – you need a little to want another hit, it’s addictive.  That’s why you need to feed your mind a little everyday – we can all find those little successes each day – the key is to find them every single day – don’t miss.

Pity Hires

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Some of the best business interactions I have each week are on the back channel with the gang over at Fistful of Talent.  It usually starts with one of our tribe asking the rest of us a question, and quickly spirals out of control.  Almost every time someone will say “this email string should be a blog post”.  Almost 100% it’s not, because the snark level is Defcon 1!  The concept of “Pity Hire” came from one of these recent interactions and I’ll give credit to the brilliant Paul Hebert (original FOT member and if you need an expert on rewards and recognition, and almost anything else, he’s your dude!).

The conversation actually started around “hiring pretty“, which I’m a huge fan of and have written about it several times.  It’s my belief that over hundreds of years, genetics has and will continue to build better hires.  Hires that are more attractive, taller, etc.  It’s just simple science and human behavior interacting.  I won’t go into detail here, you can read my previous post to get the background.  Let’s just say smart powerful rich men, get pick of women. They have kids. Better healthcare, nutrition, family wealth, access and education, lead to the cycle starting all over again. Eventually, pretty people are not just pretty, they are also smarter.  Looks at our business and political leaders for the most part – usually pretty people.

So, it’s not really that hard to then make the jump to the fact that all of us really like to hire pretty people.  Like it!  We actually love it!  Therein lies the problem.  There are only so many pretty hires to go around, and let’s face it, not all pretty people are genetically superior!  This gets us to Pity Hires.  A Pity Hire is a hire you make of someone out of shear pity for them.  They might not be so good looking, or smart, or they come from circumstances that are less than ideal.  So that you can identify and help stop this kind of hiring I wanted to list out the types of Pity Hires we tend to make:

Pity Hire Types —

Second Place Hire:  The second place pity hire is the hire you make when you someone doesn’t get hired initially because you actually had a really beautiful person to hire.  The second place hire was probably a better fit, but not as ascetically pleasing.  You find another lower level position, at lower pay, and offer that to them.  You feel bad, so you give them a lessor job.

Crappy Situation Hire: The crappy situation hire happens when you interview someone who is in, or has went through recently, a crappy situation. Newly divorced and the spouse left them for a younger, more beautiful person (happens to both males and females).  The boss from their old job, they were having an affair with, found a new younger, more attractive admin to sleep with.  Things like that – crappy situations.

Recent Breakup Hire: They were fired from their last job, when they were let go through a layoff where their past company was getting rid of the less attractive people.  You feel bad they had to go through those situations, so you hire them for your job.

No One Will Give Me My First Job Hire:  One of the most common Pity Hires is the entry level hire.  Many of us have given out this hire in our careers.  Entry level candidate, got some worthless degree in something like “Historical Urban Anthropology” and can’t figure out why no one will hire them!  They’re not good looking enough to get a job like a normal person, so you hire them.

 Pity hires aren’t necessarily bad hires.  It’s really a kind of HR charity.  We do them for friends kids, and favors for old co-workers.  They usually don’t work out well, but we can compartmentalize them for what they are, Pity Hires.  As I write this I’m wondering if we might have just come up on the next great Recruiting Metric for 2014!  Can you imagine going to your executive team — “Well, we lost 25 hires last year, but we aren’t counting 5 of those losses, they were Pity Hires!”

 

 

You Don’t Want To Know How The Sausage Is Made

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I was talking with a friend of mine recently who is an executive in operations for a large private company.  We catch up a few times a year and swap war stories. His latest had to do with some frustrating dealings he was having with his HR team.  Part of this executive’s role is to ensure that sales are made for this company.  These sales are the revenue that keeps this company in business and creates thousands of jobs.  From time to time, he has a sales professional that might do something that, let’s just say, is not quite by the book.

Let me give you an example of something that may or may not have happened:

Sales professional is competing against your biggest competition over a major multimillion dollar contract.  Your sales person has the inside track because they have a strong relationship with the potential clients main decision maker.  This main decision maker likes to party, and your sales person knows this.  Sales professional goes out and drops $3,700 at a strip club on the corporate credit card with said client.  Multimillion dollar contract is signed the next week.  On the expense report there is no other name or company listed, your client has a policy of accepting any type of gift or gratuity from vendors.

Finance alerts HR of said activity on corporate credit card, and HR continues to push the issue and wants your sales person fired over their actions.  Yes, policy was broken, more than one policy.  This was not normal behavior for your sales team.  You weren’t given a ‘heads-up’ this was about to happen (trip to strip club).  This was the largest contract anyone on your sales staff has ever gotten signed.

What do you do?

You can see how this has many issues.  There are definitely some concerns.  How do you rectify a $3700 strip club visit by one of your top sales pros, which looks like he went by himself, and ‘on the record’ won’t say that anyone went with him.  What if it gets public that is how your company is closing sales? Do you owe it to your client to let them know that their own people are breaking policy?

Here’s what my friend told me: “Tim, I like sausage. Do you like sausage? (I said I did — he continued) If you ever saw sausage being made, you wouldn’t want to eat it, it’s a disgusting process.”

He didn’t have to say anything after that.  I got it.  Sometimes in organizations we do things for the good of the organization that outwardly might not look good.  HR can realize reality, or they can hide behind policy.  Either way, we are going to have sausage makers in our organization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After The 4th Round Interview…

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I had a client recently that was undecided about a candidate after the 4th round interview.  They were thinking that maybe a fifth round would make the difference.  I told them that it wouldn’t.  In fact, it was a mistake to allow them to get to four.

Do you know what the fourth round interview says about your process?

It says that your process is broken.  No one needs four rounds of interviews to decide if a candidate is the right candidate for your organization.  A fifth round, or any number higher, is just adding insult to injury.

Here’s what anything beyond the third round interview says to your candidate:

 – “Hey, come work us, so we can totally frustrate you with our indecision culture.”

– “We need more interviews because we don’t have our shit together, but please don’t notice that.”

– “You are so mediocre we just can decide if we should pass on you, or hire you.”

– “I bet you can’t wait to come aboard and be a part of this process in the future!”

– “We like to where down candidates to see who ‘really’ wants out jobs!”

Organizations that can’t figure this out are always interviewing second tier talent.  Organizations that are talent attractors have determined that less is more.  Have a concise process. Move quick. We’ll get it right, more than we’ll get it wrong.  If we get it wrong, don’t take long to make the correction.

The reality is, is that 99% of your interviews should never need to go beyond three interviews.  It looks like this:

1st round – This is your pre-employment screening/assessments  and phone interview. Perfect placement for video screening tool (HireVue, WePow, etc.).

2nd round – Face-to-face with hiring manager and any other key stakeholders (i.e., people this person might support from other functions)

3rd round – if needed-  Face-to-face, phone, skype-type interview.  Executive sign off.  Really only needed if your line executive doesn’t have faith in the hiring manager.

More interviews after this point, yield negligible additional information, and actually might be a detriment to your hiring decision.  Why?  Here’s what happens happens after you talk about someone for so long, they turn into a piece of crap!  This is normal human and organizational behavior, by the way.  We start out talking about all the good qualities and experiences the person has, and how they can help us.  We then start searching for hickeys and, no matter what, we will find them!  Then we start talking about what’s wrong with the person and before you know it, that great candidate, becomes a piece of garbage and not good enough for your organization.

They’re not really garbage.  They’re still the really good person you initially interviewed.  We just let it go too long, and discovered they have opportunities and we don’t want to hire anyone with ‘opportunities’ we want perfect.  This is what happens after round three in almost every organization I’ve ever witnessed go to four, five, six, etc.   It might be the biggest misnomer by candidates who feel the longer you go in the interview process, the better the chance of an offer.  It’s untrue!  If you don’t get an offer after the third round, your percentages of getting an offer fall exponentially every round after!

 

How many hours of work are too many?

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An article out last week on NFL.com spoke to the Detroit Lions head coach’s, Jim Schwartz, work schedule which averages 100 hours per week!  That’s break that down:

– 7 days * 24 hours = 168 total hours in a week

– 100 work week / 7 days = 14.2 hours per day

What does a 14 hour day look like?  You get into the office at 6 or 7am and you don’t get home until 8, 9, 10pm.  Every day, every week.  I know what you’re thinking.  Well they only play 20 games.  He gets half a year off!  Plus, he makes millions of dollars.  First, NFL never stops working.  Off season might be busier than the actual season.

Why do so many of these coaches work 100 hour weeks? From the article:

“The mentality of most coaches borders on the paranoid-obsessive end of the spectrum. Good coaches care about the littlest details. It takes time to wade through film, meet with coaches and players, script practices, design game plans and perform the oodles of other responsibilities that need to be perfect…

“We’re here a ton, but then I go up and I talk to a coach about anything and I’m sitting in his office and I peek down and glance underneath his desk, and there’s a pillow and a blanket,” Lions wide receiver Nate Burleson said. “For a brief moment, I laugh and I’m like, ‘Holy smokes, this guy sleeps in his office.’ But then when you really think about it, it’s like, ‘This guy really sleeps in his office.'”

It begs the question, should the NFL or any employer put a limit on the amount of hours that a person can work?  Airlines do it for their pilots and flight crew.  Safety is paramount and the last thing you want is a pilot that has not slept for 18-24 hours.  Many other occupations do it for similar reasons.  Safety always seems to be the one factor in limiting work hours.  Is the NFL not concerned about the safety and health of their coaches?  They limit the amount of practice time for their players.

How many  of us wish we had employees who loved what they did so much they wanted to work 100 hours per week!?

BambooHR’s founders limit their entire staff to 40 hours per week.  They kick them out if they try to work more.  That seems a bit radical.  I’m sure my staff would love me doing that to them, but 40 hours in most workplace environments seems to be the minimum, not the maximum.

I’m not even focusing on whether the hours in the ‘office’ or at home.  Just total work hours.  How many hours are too many?  Hit me in the comments.  My feeling is there are times in every occupation when more or less hours are needed to do a great job at whatever it is you’re doing.  One week I can be a rock star 40 hours.  The next week I might look like a total slack for working 60 hours.  I’m a big proponent of work when you need to.  The old farmers saying of ‘there are times to make hay’, runs true in every organization.  If you have someone who is consistently, over long periods of time, working 60+ hours, you’ve got a staffing problem.

 

12 Things Happy HR People Do Differently

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I always like to surround myself with happy, positive people – I have enough pragmatism for us all! – you should see the people I work with – it’s like one big happy convention everyday at work.  Which is great for pick-me-ups, not so great if you’re just having a bad day and need to punch someone!  It’s not say everyone is happy, every second, but I think when you search out happy people, for the most part – they are usually happy.  I going to list 12 things that Happy HR People do more than non-Happy HR People – see if you see yourself in any of these –

1. Express Gratitude – When I let someone know how truly thankful I am for what they do, or did, it makes me feel happy, and I’m sure it makes them feel happy.

2. Cultivate Optimism – I start everyday truly believing I can accomplish anything I set out to today.  Not in a naive way, but in a way where I don’t feel anyone is going to put up a roadblock in front of me – except myself.

3. Avoid over-thinking and Social comparisons – I know so many people that struggle with this one.  I’m truly one of those people who feel so happy and excited for others when they find success.  I always think that they finding success will have a positive impact to me finding success – so let’s just all be successful together! To many people think the opposite.

4. Practice Acts of Kindness – Just yesterday I almost let someone cut in front of me in traffic! Oh wait, that probably doesn’t meet this criteria!  So, I struggle with this – I like to think I’m a kind person, but I see so many people who are so much more kind than I am – I know I can do better!

5. Nurture Social Relationships – This is why I love HR!  We are put into a position within our organizations where this is/should be the majority of our job description.  We get to build relationships everyday, and we are getting paid to do it – isn’t that wonderful?!

6. Develop a Strategy for Coping – I’m a move forward person – this isn’t to say I’m going to forget about what just happened – I learn from it – but I move forward.  My organization needs me to do this – you take a step back on a Monday – it’s my job on Tuesday to take a step forward – not stand around and laminate about Monday. That’s how I cope.

7. Learn To Forgive – I think my wife would say this is by far my greatest strength – I Forgive – don’t hold grudges. It’s just not something I want to carry around – there is too much great stuff in my life not to forgive and move on.  Again, I don’t want to confuse forgiving someone vs. forgetting what someone did – I can move forward, but it just not might be as it was before – that life.  But I won’t be carrying around your issues anymore!

8. Increase Flow Experiences – Flow is a state in which it feels like time stands still.  Watching my sons play sports, listening to my son read aloud to me, laughing with my wife as we sleep in on a Sunday morning, hearing my sons laugh as they tickle each other.  In the end of life – you will never feel like you had too many of these experiences – you will definitely feel like you had to many “work” experiences.

9. Savor Life’s Joys – I love lying in bed, with the windows open and listening to it rain.  Sitting on a perfectly still, calm lake and seeing the ripples of the water.  Watching my sons concentrate when they are writing or doing art and seeing their tongue move around in their mouth, without them knowing they are doing it.  And Diet Mt. Dew – that’s pretty good to!

10. Commit to Your Goals – Have you talked to someone recently who set out to run a marathon or lose so much weight – and they did it!?  Talk about happy!  Committing to, and reaching your goals drives happiness beyond that which you can imagine.

11. Practice Spirituality –  I’m not a church goer, but I know there are forces in life bigger than myself.  Being able to understand we are just one small little piece of what’s really going on, helps put life into perspective.

12. Take Care of Your Body – It’s crucial to your well being – and I know most of us can do much better than we do – but don’t ever underestimate how important this is to the over scheme of your happiness.  Energy is such a critical part of maintaining long-term happiness, and picking yourself up when we hit rough patches.  It’s just that they keep making these stupid restaurants that prepare such wonderful food! 😉

(adapted from 12 Things Happy People Do Differently – by Jacob Soko)

 

 

To Haze or Not to Haze at Work

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If you follow sports, especially NFL football, you haven’t been able to get away from the nonstop coverage of the hazing issue that took place with the Miami Dolphins between two of their offensive lineman. Long story short, veteran offensive lineman, who is white, decides rookie offensive lineman, who is black, isn’t being man enough (whatever that means).  So, veteran begins hazing him to get him tougher by leaving racist voice mails, threatening the rookie’s family, trying to force him to pay for $30,000 dinners.  This Miami Dolphin veteran feels this is normal NFL rookie hazing behavior, which usually includes carrying a veteran’s luggage at away games, carrying shoulder pads off practice field, maybe buying some donuts for morning meetings, or picking up some pizzas for lunch.  The rookie he decided to haze was a Stanford graduate, with parents who are Harvard graduates. Where do you think this is going?

The question comes up constantly in workplaces, of which the NFL should be considered a workplace, shouldn’t ‘some’ hazing be allowed?  It’s easy for all of us to say “NO!”   It’s hard for us to know that in many, many instances our positive, not negative, workplace culture is built on many forms of hazing.  Phil Knight, the Godfather of Nike, wrote in his own autobiography, Just Do It, that his own sales reps, called ‘Ekins’ (Nike backwards), all got Nike swoosh tattoos on their calf when they were hired.  It wasn’t required, but if you wanted to ‘fit’ in, you got it.  Hazing at one of the largest, most successful companies in the world.

At my own company we tell new recruiters that they have to use their first commission check to buy everyone a round of drinks.  Knowing that this check will never cover the amount of what that tab will be.  (For the record – we just threaten this and don’t tell them the truth, but I always get the tab!) Hazing, all the same.

I’m sure, as you read this, that you are thinking of things that happen in your own company.  “We decorate peoples cubes for their birthdays” or “We make the new employee stand up in a meeting and share their most embarrassing moment” or “We don’t let the new employees know when it’s jean’s day”.  All harmless, all hazing.

Show it comes down to one small question: Should you allow hazing or not?

Or do you just call it something different like, cultural norms, team building, trust exercises, initiation, rite of passage, a test of loyalty, etc.?

I wonder how many of us admonish this veteran Miami Dolphin player (who for the record isn’t a choir boy) as a monster, while we turn a blind-eye to what is going on in our organizations.  What is happening in Miami, and I’m sure many sports franchises, fraternities/sororities, college locker rooms, etc., is very similar to what is happening in the hallways of your office building, on the floor of your manufacturing facility, sales bullpen and cube farm.

We allow hazing because it has become a societal norm.  “Well, I went through it, so should everyone else that comes after me.”  “Getting the tattoo is part of ‘who’ we are.”  “She’s ‘one’ of us, she gets it.”  This is what a NFL player was doing.  He was doing what he was taught to do by those before him.  By the culture he was working in.  No controls.  Just culture.  The funny thing about culture is that ‘it’ happens.  Whether we like it or not, our culture happens.

The Life Cycle of a Hot Job Market

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In any market, even during really bad recessionary economic times, there are certain categories of jobs and skills that remain extremely hard to come by.  In one market it might be a certain kind of engineer, another time and place it might be nurses, or it might even be seemingly something as simple as truck drivers.  Many of us are now facing this market with various kinds of IT professionals (Developers, Analyst, etc.).   Through all of these gaps in inventory of skills something remains very common and predictable — the cycle that takes place.

Here’s what the cycle of a Hot Job market looks like for a certain ‘specialized’ need: (let’s use Bakers for our example, no one really ever would feel we would lack for Bakers, right!?)

1. Companies begin by hiring up to ‘full employment’ with in the market category.  Usually 3% unemployed Bakers would mean ‘full employment’, those last 3% no one really wants there the folks who don’t really want to work, have other problems (like substance abuse, harassers, etc.).

2. Companies begin taking ‘fliers’ at the bottom 3% that are on the market.  “Come guys, Billy is a good Baker and he says he won’t put Crack in the Cupcakes anymore!”

3. Companies begin to feel pain of not enough Bakers. Their overtime is going up, positions are taking longer to fill, product quality goes down a bit, etc.

4. Companies begin brainstorming on how to get more Bakers.  They add a Baker apprenticeship (we can build our own Bakers!), they add retention bonuses to ensure they keep their Bakers (Free cookies!) and they start coddling to all the Bakers needs (you need a new baking hat!? You got it!).

5. Bakers start to get calls about jobs.  Those jobs are paying much more than they ever imagined they would make, plus you get free cookies and cakes!

6. People start to hear stories about Bakers making six figures! Wait, I want some of that baking cake money!  I would love to bake cakes for a living!  How do I get me some of that baking cake money!?

7. Bakers start demanding things they never thought they could.  4am is too early for me to make the cupcakes, I only want to bake cupcakes after 6am. I don’t bake cupcakes on Sunday. I only work on wedding cakes, not birthday cakes, I’m a professional!

8.  More and more people start coming into the market to become bakers.  It’s the ‘hot’ field, the best and brightest want to be bakers. There are TV shows about Bakers. Bakers are cool.  Baking is ‘the’ profession to get into.  USA Today has Baking as the growth profession to be in the next 10 years. (USA Today announcing anything as ‘hot’ is the key that it’s probably on the backside of being hot)

9. Good and bad Bakers, alike, start to become arrogant.  This is the tipping point of a Hot Job Market — Arrogance.

10. Companies don’t like to be held ‘hostage’ by any certain skill set, so they ensure the market will get flooded with candidates.  The pain of not having enough talent has gotten bad enough to ensure companies will fund whatever it takes to get them out of this pain.

The Wall Street Journal announced recently that Silicon Valley has an arrogance problem.  Those IT professionals that all of us need and can’t do with out, are beginning to feel their market power.  Some of you might say, well this has been going on for 10 years, and you would be correct.  It has been a hot job market going on a decade and continues to be hot.  The arrogance isn’t even new for many.  But it is now becoming common place.

I have quick story.  In 2001 automotive designers in Detroit could have a different job every day if they wanted and they named the price they wanted to make. The market was on fire. Thousands of people start to flood the market.  Designing wasn’t easy, but you could get educated and start at the bottom and learn the skills it took to become a good designer.  It was ‘system’ based, meaning you had to learn certain computer systems to learn how to design, plus some other skills.  Today, designers are still making less than what they were 15 years ago.

Basic economics will tell us these ‘hot’ markets will eventually work themselves out.  The cycle is always the same.  The ending is always the same.  In the history of civilization there has never been a ‘hot’ job category that hasn’t, eventually, been figured out.

Yahoo’s Mayer Fails At Performance Management, Again

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It hit the news wire last week Yahoo’s embattled CEO, Marissa Mayer, is set to fire 500 lower performing employees.  Sounds all well and good, right?!  It’s about time!  The HR blogging community as a whole kills managers and executives for not moving fast enough on getting rid of under performing employees.  Mayer is finally doing it! Well, not so fast…

From Business Insider:

“The reviews were part of Mayer’s plans to trim the Yahoo workforce “very surgically, very carefully,” according to a source close to the company.

Now, Swisher reports, Mayer is planning to let go any employees who were rated “misses” or “occasionally misses” at least twice during the past five quarters.

Swisher says as many as 500 employees could eventually be effected. She says that some Yahoo employees are already being let go.

Yahoo has many thousands more employees than many industry experts believes it needs to have.”

Here’s what will happen in reality.
Anytime you ‘decide’ to make cuts based on a large group is rated, as Yahoo is doing above, you’ll always end up with rater error.  Hiring managers are going to know what’s going on.  “Oh, so if I rate Timmy “occasionally misses” on completing projects on time, you’re going to make me fire him? No problem, Timmy “never” misses, now.”  What you’ve done is completely take out your managers ability to develop talent through your performance management process.  You’ve decided to use your performance management process as a weapon.  This will not end well.
When you begin down this path, you end up in a death spiral corporately.  You’ve handcuffed your managers’ ability to manage their teams. “Well, I can’t deliver effective performance messages because you’ll just fire the person. So now, everyone is ‘completely’ average or above!”  Even when their not.  You’ve taken away your ability as an organization to get better internally, and driven home the message “You either be a rock star or we will hire a rock star from the outside”.  No longer can you ‘work’ to get better in our environment.  Most people do not want to work in that type of environment.
How should Yahoo handle this issue?
First and foremost you can’t have a ‘black and white’ cut off.  This doesn’t work anywhere!  What is an employee had two “occasionally misses” three quarters ago, but since has been great.  Under your plan, they’re gone anyway.  Does that really make sense?  Ultimately you need to let your individual leaders make these decisions and hold them accountable to the budget.  This is real world stuff, the budget is desperately important in Yahoo’s case.  Leaders get paid the big bucks to make tough decisions.  Make them, make those decisions.  If they can’t, or won’t, you know who really needs to be replaced.
I get it, Yahoo is in a really bad position.  They need to get leaner and they are attempting to do this by letting the weak performers ago first.  I actually admire that.  Way to many companies just layoff based on seniority and end up cutting great talent and keeping bad talent.  This is better, but I think they could have made it even more effective with a little more leadership influence to the decision making process.

Failure is the new Black

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This inspiration came from my friend William Tincup.  If you don’t know him, you need to know him, he’s brilliant.  Like my head hurts after talking to him brilliant, in a good way.

He made a comment recently which was just this:

“Failure is the new black.”

Another friend of ours, Jason Seiden, has been saying this for years, in a little different way, with his “Fail Spectacularly” motto.  Either way, you get the point, it’s now ‘in’ to talk about your failures. It’s a really popular and motivating thought process for a lot of people. Basically, it’s alright that you failed, go do it again and eventually you’ll get it right.

Past generations would go to great lengths to hide their failures.  Think about your parents and grand parents, you never heard them talk about things they failed at.  Think back about how your own parents spoke to you. Was failure really an option?  It wasn’t in my household.  We’re Sacketts, and Sacketts are winners, and winners get to do what they want (oh wait, that was me weekly to my own kids!).

I’m just wondering who originally decided that it was alright to fail?

You can’t go anywhere anymore without everyone telling you “Success starts with Failure” or “The Secret to success is failure”.  This comes from the concept of traditional scientific theory.  Have a theory. Test theory. Fail. Try another approach. Fail. Keep trying and eventually you’ll be successful.  Straightforward. Makes sense.  But that really only plays out when you’re testing scientific theories.

Can we agree real life might be a bit different?

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book David and Goliath talks about the concept of failure and what it does to the brightest college students in the world.  His research found that the top 50  PhD students going into schools like Harvard, are all smarter than the smartest kid going into Missouri.  But at the end of their schooling the brightest kid at Missouri is more successful than the number 50 kid at Harvard.  Why is that?  The number 50 kid believes they are a failure because they are not as smart as the 49 kids above them at Harvard. While the kid at Missouri, who wasn’t as bright as all the Harvard kids, became a rock star at Missouri. That success, that confidence, led him/her to more and more success.  Put that same Missouri kid at Harvard and he/she would have failed miserably and may have even dropped out of the program.

Let me give you an example.  Your kid goes up to bat.  Strikes out, which is a failure. Goes up the next time and strikes out.  Goes up again and strikes out. Continues game after game, never hitting, only striking out.  Continued failure will not lead to this kid’s success.  In fact, continued failure will lead to more failure as their confidence is shattered.

The path to success, for most life situations, is not through failure, it’s through success.  Continued little successes that will eventually lead to big successes.

Celebrating failure, like it’s some sort of a success, doesn’t lead to success.  Is it alright to fail?  Of course it is. But should we be celebrating it?  I have children.  I want them to be successful at anything they do.  When they fail, we don’t throw a party.  We talk about where failure leads, what we/they need to do to ensure we don’t fail the next time.  Many times that entails a ton of hard work.  Failures enemy is hard work.

I don’t like that we are getting comfortable as a society with failure.  That failure has become something to celebrate. Something that is now cool.   That we give a trophy to the team that lost every game.  It doesn’t make us better as a society.  It doesn’t make our organizations better.  Failure leads to more failure, not to success.  Here’s hoping ‘Success’ becomes the new black!