Fear of Failure

September 25, 2019 Stacie Morgan

An authentic and slightly irreverent blog on the applied dimensions of leadership & change...

My Crap
Your Crap
Our Crap
Everybody’s Crap.

Remember the 1947 song phrase “I sold my soul to the company store” by Merle Travis? There is a new kind of truth to that today. We may not be living in a “company town” and giving all the money we earn back to the company in rent, utilities, clothes, and groceries as the song implies; but we may still be “selling our souls” in some ways and and both we and our organizations are suffering as a result.

Guilt and fear tear at our souls and our organizations. When we feel guilty for taking time to rest and replenish ourselves, time to think, experiment, and ponder possibilities; we thwart our natural beings’ needs and deprive our organization of our best—our true abilities and the spark they need to sustain the current state and evolve to meet future needs. When we’re burdened by guilt and the associated fear, that becomes our focus and our filter for all decisions.

When we are afraid of what our employer will think or do—when we are afraid of failure—we cannot create success because we cannot fail. We cannot give our all or best because we are not free to do that which is not previously defined. So no exploring, experimenting, innovating, creating. We just keep repeating the exact steps that will achieve the exact same results. That is not success, it just was success…the first time.

Success is a process of learning how to fulfill needs better, all of the time. Failure is the process of creating success and guilt has no place any where but the criminal justice system. So how can we cut the crap and get rid of our guilt and fear of failure? Let’s break it down…

Let’s start off by acknowledging that we want to be perfect. We don’t want to make mistakes. We don’t want to admit our mistakes, weaknesses, and failings…not just yet. We know we need to. We just need a little time to get our head around our humanness, to reconcile with the fact that although we set out with the best intentions, our sneaky little egos slipped in when we weren’t looking and set up camp around all of our ideas, making it oh-so-hard to let go and move on. Aw, crap!

Not to worry. This is expected (or it should be by now). Give yourself the time you need to break camp and pack out your garbage.

Great! Now let’s see how we can help others do the same.

Now we can better understand the complexity of change, especially the human side of change. You see, those with whom we work have all of their own crap just like we each do, plus they want to please those with whom and for whom they work. Yep, double crap. They are trying to manage their crap and your crap, but that is your job. We have to keep our own crap from leaching into the flow of our interactions with others. They have enough to worry about with the work we give them as supervisors and team members.

But wait, there’s more! Our personal crap intersects our organizational crap. You got it…triple crap….

Organizations create pathways for success that are focussed on repeating previous successes, not generating new ones. All management systems that are not designed for learning institutionalize the status quo and prevent future success. When these policies, processes, and procedures collide with our inner drive to evolve and grow, they result in the guilt and fear that soon crystallizes around everything we do, rendering the pull of our human nature inert and the push of the organization’s management system a force that threatens to shatter us all. Organizations can cut the crap by institutionalizing failure—learning, that is—in all of organizational policies, processes, and procedures.

Our communities become brainwashed by the force of organizations’ perceived power and the ubiquity of their commodities, woven into the fabric of our society. Due to this envelopment, we can no longer discern where organizations end and our lives—our real human nature—begin. Intended or not, fear of failure is the subliminal message propagated by most marketing, whether it be direct, indirect, overt, or subliminal. Products and services are most often ideals—shortcuts to purported success—convincing you it is possible to avoid experiencing failure, listening to your body, your mind, and your spirit. We can cut the crap by embracing failure and loving ourselves and each other through the refining process of growing (failing). It’s tried and true! Then you know that you have what you need and can go buy what you want.