
Embracing failure is a good way to fail - brilliant
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/06/embracingFailureIsAGoodWay.html
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elbrodeur
I'm sorry, but I find the underlying point hard to swallow:

"Later, when [the company] did work, I realized that moment, while locking the
front door that night, was when the company turned around. When we went from
being in crisis mode to being a winner, for one very simple reason. I tried to
visualize failure, and couldn't do it."

So, because you were unable to imagine yourself failing, you succeeded?

Doesn't this smell distinctly of self-actualization and other hocus-pocus?
Especially since the article leads with:

" One night I was leaving the office and I knew the next morning I was going
to lay off a quarter of the company and cut the salaries of everyone else in
half."

So, you were able to recognize that you failed to provide one quarter of the
company jobs which you presumably offered them and also failed to live up to
paying the salaries of everybody else but you were, at that very moment,
unable to imagine a situation where... you failed to save the company?

Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but this is, in the words of Winer "really
convoluted and it's really wrong."

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rcade
People who say "failure is not an option" are hopeless pollyannas. Success
does not happen because you refused to accept failure as a possible outcome.
Success is a product of hard work, talent, timing and luck in varying
measures.

I've failed in 9 out of 10 projects I began on the web since 1995. I have been
fortunate that the 1-in-10 successes have enabled me to continue trying new
ventures. If I refused to acknowledge failure, would 10 out of 10 projects I
launched be a success? It would be foolish to think so.

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fleitz
Embracing failure is a good way to fail and also a good way to succeed. If
succeeding in business was as easy as following a mantra we'd all be
millionaires. Time has told us that Winer made arguably the right decision,
but time has not told us whether Google made the right decision to kill wave.

If either philosophy was right all of the time YC would just put a checkbox
with "Embrace Failure?" on the application and be done with it.

Wisdom is knowing when to apply the right knowledge.

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blasdel
Is success also not be an option if you haven't visualized it?

If you don't have a plan for revenue much less profitability or acquisition,
I'd say that you haven't 'visualized success' the way you would do so for
failure in this parable — on the basis of not dying, not traction.

Given the (IMO, correct) disdain for business plans and worship of 'making
something people want', there seems to be a big inconsistency here.

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petercooper
I never thought I'd see Dave Winer and Jason Fried singing from the same hymn-
sheet. Dave has a lot of experience through running his businesses over the
years and it's a shame he doesn't share his evergreen wisdom on these matters
in this way more often.

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brilliant
Followup:
[http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/07/visualizingFailureDa...](http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/07/visualizingFailureDay2.html)

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dublinclontarf
What happens when you have no trouble visualising what will happen when you
fail?

Sometimes it's quite simple to see. Failing means no rent money......etc.

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TotlolRon
"when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and
failure was not one of them."

\-- _Apollo 13 FDO Flight Controller Jerry Bostick regarding the source of the
movie quote "Failure is not an option"._

