
Failure is not an Option - DivineBytes - eibrahim
http://magedsharabi.tumblr.com/post/26493024933/failure-is-not-an-option
======
smacktoward
"Failure is not an option!" is a phrase that automatically annoys me when I
hear it, because almost nobody who uses it actually understands what it means.

It's usually used in the sense of "we have decided to rule out the possibility
of failure." But that's not really what the phrase means. What it means is
that _you have exhausted every possibility other than succeeding._ It means
that, to borrow a poker term, you're "all in" -- you have gotten yourself into
a position from which there are only two ways out: success, and utter ruin.

This is what the screenwriters of the movie _Apollo 13_ were getting at when
they coined the phrase (it's usually credited to NASA flight director Gene
Kranz, but that's incorrect: see <http://www.spaceacts.com/notanoption.htm>).
When the Apollo 13 mission went awry, the NASA teams on the ground didn't have
the option to accept failure, because failure meant the death of the three
astronauts and probably the end of the moon landing program. There was
literally nowhere else for the people involved to go. They were "all in" --
the astronauts especially, but even to some degree the men on the ground. (If
you're a mission control specialist in 1970, and you get drummed out of NASA
with the loss of three astronauts on your record, whaddaya gonna do, go work
for the other space program down the street? Start your own? Your career is
done.)

What most of the people who use this phrase miss is that rarely are they
actually in that deep. If your social video sharing startup fails, you've lost
a couple years of your life, and maybe some money. But you're not _ruined._
You're still alive; you still have your skills and talents; you can still go
get a job somewhere. If you're smart, people will probably even lend you money
to try again someday. You're down, but not _out._

A true "failure is not an option" startup scenario would be one where, if the
startup didn't take flight, you would lose every dollar and piece of property
you own, all your academic and professional credentials would be revoked, and
you'd be barred from ever working in technology again.

That's what "all in" looks like. It's fucking _terrifying._

It's also much, much higher stakes than all but a few of us will every play
for. Which is a good thing! But unless you're one of those few, if you go
around talking about "failure is not an option," it makes you sound kind of
stupid.

~~~
dredmorbius
It wasn't until I read Neal Stephenson's _Anatham_ that I could finally pin a
name on this logical fallacy: Diax's Rake. "Never believe a thing simply
because you want it to be true"

<http://anathem.wikia.com/wiki/Diaxs_Rake>

As "failure is not an option" is typically used, it's an "abandon all logic
and evidence and punt on faith" mode of operation I see far too often, in
which the meaning isn't "we find it acceptable to fail", but "because of our
blind faith in some belief, we set the _possibility_ of failure as zero.
Particularly in various business inspirational literature and Republican Party
military, foreign, economic, energy, and environmental policies.

Articles such as this one make me wish for an option to downvote, rather than
simply flag, submissions.

------
angdis
Dude, if success or failure actually hung on rhetoric (word-choice), there
would be millions more start-ups "succeeding" today.

"Failure is not an option" in that one never explicitly _chooses_ failure. It
just happens for a million different reasons. There are a million reasons why
even a flawless gem of a productivity and time-management app won't make more
money than you put into developing it.

Ask the Chandler folks, incredibly smart and experienced people who set out to
build the greatest calendaring/PIM/to-do-list eva... and failed.

~~~
batista
> _Dude, if success or failure actually hung on rhetoric (word-choice), there
> would be millions more start-ups "succeeding" today._

Truer words were never spoken!

------
dools
I try to do stuff all the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Trying isn't the issue, it's stopping trying that results in failure.

