To Err Is Human: Why Failure Is The Only Way To Succeed

If your function will only 'succeed' or 'fail' with no additional information, I would recommend you return 0 for failure and 1 for success, because it's simpler and more semantically valid. If your function may fail with multiple status codes, the only way to go is have 0 for success and other values for failure representing different statuses.

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Failure is not a step backward; it’s an excellent stepping stone to success. We never learn to move out of our comfort zone if we don’t overcome our fear of failure. The most progressive companies.
There seems to be only one sure way to avoid failure and that is never to do anything. But this in itself is failure of a different kind. In this paper our exploration of the nature of failure and its relationship with success suggests that true failure consists of not trying at all, giving up too soon, or not learning and changing when.

To err is human: why failure is the only way to succeed quote

Rejection. Losing. Failure. Nobody strives for them. No athlete sets out to lose, no entrepreneur’s goal is bankruptcy. But as if an act of divine mercy, there’s positives to be found in the negatives. In fact, successful people often preach as Gospel the value found in failure.

Denis Waitley said it well. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.”

The mark of a successful person lies in their response to negative situations. They lick their wounds but stay on the battlefield. They find strength in their scars. Here are 10 hidden blessings to cushion rejection, losing and failure.

1. You’ll clarify your passions.

Many of us struggle with decision making. Folks with creative energy typically have their hand in multiple pies. But even a jack-of-all-trades knows there’s a limit to how thin you can spread yourself.

Often, failure and losing result from diminished passion. You'll realize you weren’t as passionate about that project as first thought. The pruning effect is a positive. As you clear your plate a little, you'll make more room for what really excites you, and direct your energy toward that. Focused energy is when you’re most effective. Failure gets rid of fluff.

Related: How to Redefine Failure so You're Not Crippled by It

2. You’ll uncover new skills.

Remember when George Bush nimbly dodged that shoe aimed at his head? Nobody thought he had the skill to do that. And I suspect neither did he. Until that moment.

Facing challenges and enduring a loss compels you to gather up resources and develop skills beyond your arsenal. In cases of “hysterical strength,” where people lift vehicles off someone trapped, it’s the negative situation that creates the spike of adrenaline needed to act beyond one’s capability.

Negative experiences cause us to respond in ways beyond what we thought possible. The obstacle beckons to be overcome. To rise to the occasion, there needs to be an occasion.

3. You’ll find out who your friends are.

Take a spill and you’ll see who emerges out of the Facebook crowd to lift you up. Sure, everyone’s busy, but we make time for the things we value and care about. “I’m too busy” can be translated, “It’s not that important.”

Hitting rock bottom has a way of uncovering the healthy, genuine relationships from the detrimental. You’ll want to keep investing in those who are nursing your wounds, and distancing yourself from those silent and nowhere to be seen.

4. You’ll check your blind spots.

It only takes one accident for a driver to never forget to check their blind-spot again. A harsh way to learn, but some changes in behavior only happen with major shocks to the system.

While there are habits and skills you haven’t yet acquired, failures remind us of habits and skills we do possess, but are simply lazy in implementing. After suffering a burglary, you’ll never forget to lock the screen door again.

Related: 5 Mistakes I've Made So You Don't Have To

5. You’ll Burn away pride and arrogance.

To Err Is Human: Why Failure Is The Only Way To Succeed As A

Nobody is immune to pride and arrogance. To say you’re beyond pride and arrogance is a little…well…prideful and arrogant. Losing is the glass of water for that bitter pill of pride. But that unpleasant process gives birth to humility. Which is perhaps the most attractive and profitable virtue anyone can possess.

As the well known proverb goes, pride goeth before the fall. Rejection and loss exchanges pride for humility, and humility may be the saviour that keeps you from a truly damaging fall.

6. You’ll grow elephant skin.

The shins of Muay Thai fighters can break baseball bats. The micro-fractures from hours of kicking heavy bags become filled with calcium, resulting in abnormal bone density just as muscle fibers grow as a result of micro-tears in the gym.

The adage rings true, it’s the pain that brings the gain. Advice 101 for anyone stepping out to pursue their dream is prepare for rejection, criticism and haters. With each punch thrown your way, you’ll realize you can’t please everyone, that the issue lies more with them than with you and the impact will start to soften.

7. You’ll never again wonder “what if?”

The question of “what if?” can cause hours on end staring out the window. When that curiosity is pursued only to find you’ve boarded the wrong plane, failure is the blessing that pulls you right off. You’ll no longer be kept up at night wondering about that other option.

Curiosity can cripple your consciousness and distract from the work you should be doing. But sometimes engaging your own nagging is the only way to silence it.

Seeing his father drink beer, a teenage Tony Robbins begged his mother to let him try. Not only did she let him try, she gave him a whole six-pack, and wouldn’t let him leave until he drank every drop. Tony has never touched alcohol since. The taste of his own vomit may have something to do with that.

Related: 3 Ways Owning Your Mistakes Will Make You Powerful

8. You’ll finally ask for help.

Everyone with passion and ambition is tragically plagued with superhero-syndrome. That becomes harmful when the candle is burning at both ends, drifting toward burnout.

When the word “help” disappears from your vocabulary, it’s found when you crash and burn. You'll realize the skill of delegation is critical for your health and progress. The pain teaches us to move from viewing help negatively as a form of weakness, to positively recognizing that success is expanding your own capacity by forming a team.

9. You’ll go to the drawing board.

Failure encourages you to engage in iteration. The process of reevaluating and refining produces a better result. As the saying goes, Why fix it if it ain’t broke? Some things need fixing, but reevaluation seldom happens before something breaks.

One of the greatest human achievements is the 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, without a shark cage. The only individual in the world to accomplish that feat is 64-year old Diana Nyad in 2013. It was her fifth attempt. She tried once in 1978 and three more times from 2011 – 2012 before succeeding.

One major reason her fourth attempt was cut short was jellyfish stings that left her face puffy and swollen. This time, she wore a full body suit, gloves and a mask at night—when jellyfish rise to the surface.

She failed, went back to the drawing board, made iterations, then succeeded.

10. You’ll appreciate your success.

Value and meaning become heightened in the face of difficulty. The greatest celebrations come from the toughest battles. You’ll realize the dream isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. When the journey includes getting back on your feet and dusting yourself off, you’ll be more inclined to stop when you see roses, and express a little more gratitude at the finish line.

There are just 14 “eight-thousanders” on Earth, meaning the tiny number of mountains higher than 8,000 meters. Few recognize the name Kangchenjunga while Everest, just 262 meters higher, is a household name. The failures and deaths attempting to climb Everest make it the most respected and celebrated climb.

The bitterness of every failure adds sweetness to every victory.

Related: What Scaling Mount Everest Taught Me About Leadership

James Reason’s 12 Principles of Error Management

James Reason, Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester, set out 12 systemic human factors centric principles of error management in his book Managing Maintenance Error: A Practical Guide (co-written with Alan Hobbs and published in 2003). These principles are valid beyond aviation maintenance and are well worth re-visiting:

Human error is both universal & inevitable:Human error is not a moral issue. Human fallibility can be moderated but it can never be eliminated.
Errors are not intrinsically bad:Success and failure spring from the same psychological roots. Without them we could neither learn nor acquire the skills that are essential to safe and efficient work.
You cannot change the human condition, but you can change the conditions in which humans work:Situations vary enormously in their capacity for provoking unwanted actions. Identifying these error traps and recognising their characteristics are essential preliminaries to effective error management.
The best people can make the worst mistakes: No one is immune! The best people often occupy the most responsible positions so that their errors can have the greatest impact…
People cannot easily avoid those actions they did not intend to commit:Blaming people for their errors is emotionally satisfying but remedially useless. We should not, however, confuse blame with accountability. Everyone ought to be accountable for his or her errors [and] acknowledge the errors and strive to be mindful to avoid recurrence.
Errors are consequences not causes: …errors have a history. Discovering an error is the beginning of a search for causes, not the end. Only be understanding the circumstances…can we hope to limit the chances of their recurrence.
Many errors fall into recurrent patterns:Targeting those recurrent error types is the most effective way of deploying limited Error Management resources.
Safety significant errors can occur at all levels of the system:Making errors is not the monopoly of those who get their hands dirty. …the higher up an organisation an individual is, the more dangerous are his or her errors. Error management techniques need to be applied across the whole system.
Error management is about managing the manageable:Situations and even systems are manageable if we are mindful. Human nature – in the broadest sense – is not. Most of the enduring solutions…involve technical, procedural and organisational measures rather than purely psychological ones.
Error management is about making good people excellent:Excellent performers routinely prepare themselves for potentially challenging activities by mentally rehearsing their responses to a variety of imagined situations. Improving the skills of error detection is at least as important as making people aware of how errors arise in the first place.
There is no one best way:Different types of human factors problem occur at different levels of the organisation and require different management techniques. Different organisational cultures require different ‘mixing and matching’….of techniques. People are more likely to buy-in to home grown measures…
Effective error management aims as continuous reform not local fixes: There is always a strong temptation to focus upon the last few errors …but trying to prevent individual errors is like swatting mosquitoes…the only way to solve the mosquito problem is drain the swamps in which they breed. Reform of the system as a whole must be a continuous process whose aim is to contain whole groups of errors rather than single blunders.

Error management has three components, says Reason:

Reduction
Containment
Managing these so they remain effective

Its the third aspect that is most challenging according to Reason:

It is simply not possible to order in a package of Error Management measures, implement them and then expect them to work without further attention You cannot put them in place and then tick them off as another job completed. In an important sense, the process – the continuous striving toward system reform – is the product.

To Err Is Human: Why Failure Is The Only Way To Succeed Quote

The topic of weak or ambiguous signals was discussed in this 2006 article: Facing Ambiguous Threats

UPDATE 8 February 2018: The UK Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) say: Future safety requires new approaches to people development They say that in the future rail system “there will be more complexity with more interlinked systems working together”:

…the role of many of our staff will change dramatically. The railway system of the future will require different skills from our workforce. There are likely to be fewer roles that require repetitive procedure following and more that require dynamic decision making, collaborating, working with data or providing a personalised service to customers. A seminal white paper on safety in air traffic control acknowledges the increasing difficulty of managing safety with rule compliance as the system complexity grows: ‘The consequences are that predictability is limited during both design and operation, and that it is impossible precisely to prescribe or even describe how work should be done.’ Since human performance cannot be completely prescribed, some degree of variability, flexibility or adaptivity is required for these future systems to work.

They recommend:

Invest in manager skills to build a trusting relationship at all levels.
Explore ‘work as done’ with an open mind.
Shift focus of development activities onto ‘how to make things go right’ not just ‘how to avoid things going wrong’.
Harness the power of ‘experts’ to help develop newly competent people within the context of normal work.
Recognise that workers may know more about what it takes for the system to work safety and efficiently than your trainers, and managers.

UPDATE 12 February 2018: Safety blunders expose lab staff to potentially lethal diseases in UK. Tim Trevan, a former UN weapons inspector who now runs Chrome Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Maryland, said safety breaches are often wrongly explained away as human error.

Blaming it on human error doesn’t help you learn, it doesn’t help you improve. You have to look deeper and ask: ‘what are the environmental or cultural issues that are driving these things?’ There is nearly always something obvious that can be done to improve safety.

One way to address issues in the lab is you don’t wait for things to go wrong in a major way: you look at the near-misses. You actively scan your work on a daily or weekly basis for things that didn’t turn out as expected. If you do that, you get a better understanding of how things can go wrong.

Another approach is to ask people who are doing the work what is the most dangerous or difficult thing they do. Or what keeps them up at night. These are always good pointers to where, on a proactive basis, you should be addressing things that could go wrong.

UPDATE 13 February 2018: Considering human factors and developing systems-thinking behaviours to ensure patient safety

Medication errors are too frequently assigned as blame towards a single person. By considering these errors as a system-level failure, healthcare providers can take significant steps towards improving patient safety.

‘Systems thinking’ is a way of better understanding complex workplace issues; exploring relationships between system elements to inform efforts to improve; and realising that ‘cause and effect’ are not necessarily closely related in space or time.

This approach does not come naturally and is neither well-defined nor routinely practised…. When under stress, the human psyche often reduces complex reality to linear cause-and-effect chains.

Harm and safety are the results of complex systems, not single acts.

UPDATE 2 March 2018: An excellent initiative to create more Human Centred Design by use of a Human Hazard Analysis is described in Designing out human error

HeliOffshore, the global safety-focused organisation for the offshore helicopter industry, is exploring a fresh approach to reducing safety risk from aircraft maintenance. Recent trials with Airbus Helicopters and HeliOne show that this new direction has promise. The approach is based on an analysis of the aircraft design to identify where ‘error proofing’ features or other mitigations are most needed to support the maintenance engineer during critical maintenance tasks.

To Err Is Human: Why Failure Is The Only Way To Succeed Quotes

The trial identified the opportunity for some process improvements, and discussions facilitated by HeliOffshore are planned for early 2018.

UPDATE 11 April 2018:The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams (emphasis added):

…groups that performed well treated mistakes with curiosity and shared responsibility for the outcomes. As a result people could express themselves, their thoughts and ideas without fear of social retribution. The environment they created through their interaction was one of psychological safety.

Without behaviors that create and maintain a level of psychological safety in a group, people do not fully contribute — and when they don’t, the power of cognitive diversity is left unrealized. Furthermore, anxiety rises and defensive behavior prevails.

We choose our behavior. We need to be more curious, inquiring, experimental and nurturing. We need to stop being hierarchical, directive, controlling, and conforming.

We believe this applies to all teams not just those solving problems. Retrospective management application of culpability decisions aids have no more a place when trying to solve problems than they do in other work activities.

UPDATE 22 December 2019: Our article is also cited here Anatomy of errors: My patient story and Supporting Patient Safety Through Education and Training.

Maintenance Observation Program

Aerossurance worked with the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) to create a Maintenance Observation Program (MOP) requirement for their contractible BARSOHO offshore helicopter Safety Performance Requirements to help learning about routine maintenance and then to initiate safety improvements:

Aerossurance can provide practice guidance and specialist support to successfully implement a MOP.

Aerossurance was pleased to sponsor this Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) Human Factors Group: Engineering conference on 12 May 2015 at Cranfield University: Human Factors in Engineering – the Next Generation

Aerossurance is pleased to be supporting the annual Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors’ (CIEHF) Human Factors in Aviation Safety Conference for the third year running. This year the conference takes place 13 to 14 November 2017 at the Hilton London Gatwick Airport, UK with the theme: How do we improve human performance in today’s aviation business?

Aerossurance is pleased to be both sponsoring and presenting at a Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) Human Factors Group: Engineering seminar Maintenance Error: Are we learning? to be held on 9 May 2019 at Cranfield University.

Aerossurance is an Aberdeen based aviation consultancy. For advice you can trust on practical and effective safety management, contact us at: enquiries@aerossurance.com