Fail Faster

Why do most successful companies embrace the "fail-faster" paradigm? Because they know that many small failures ultimately lead to a big win:

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, sent a memo to his shareholders when Amazon became the fastest company to break annual sales of $100 billion:

I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.

Most large organizations are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a one hundred times payoff, you should take that bet every time.

We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that when you swing, the most runs you can get is 4. In business, every once in a while, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold.

We hear stories of people achieving meteoric success and "making it", but less about their numerous failures to get there. It's easy to think, "They hit a lucky home run!" But is it really luck when they've stepped up to the plate hundreds of times?

Reading about such ideas confirms that quitting a full-time job was the right choice for me. I can lead a traditional career with predictable success (and minimal failures). However, a career type that truly resonates with me is unconventional, so I have to experiment and embrace failures.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should quit their full-time job. Traditional career path works for many people, but not for everyone. Different career models are necessary because of individual differences in goals, values, and risk tolerance.

Join me on a journey to redesign life, one step at a time! 👊