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Success and Failure - Should We Use These Words?

Picture of Ryan Schweighart
A lot of people don't like to use the word 'failure', including Oprah.
It got me thinking, if we shouldn't use failure, should we use success? Can one exist without the other?
We see this contrast everywhere up and down history -- good/evil, light/dark, yin/yang, black/white, yes/no, God/devil, and Jacob/man-in-black (IYKYK). Based on these seemingly countless examples, I propose success/failure have to coincide. One cannot exist without the other.
 
But...
Should they exist in our vocabulary at all?
 
I support eliminating the words altogether. The main advantage of elimination is it stretches our time horizon. Let's say I am part of a professional sports team. We define 'success' as winning a championship this season. Then, we don't win the championship this season. What do we call our season? A failure? No. A success? No.
 
So what do we call a season where we don't win a championship? I suggest something like a 'sample' or a 'learning opportunity'.
Now, I know this could be considered soft or avoiding reality. On the contrary, viewing something like losing a season as a sample instead of a failure leads to a deeper understanding of the reality. It forces us to take a look at why we didn't win. It broadens our time horizon to how can we fix next season, the following season, and so on. It forces us to solve problems.
 
This leads to the next question -- how do we solve problems?
Toyota popularized this concept, but I like to think of it as acting like a three-year-old: ask "Why?" 5 times.
 
Let's continue with the sports analogy.
Why did we lose the championship? Because we didn't score more points than the other team (classic coach being interviewed after the game answer).
Why didn't we score more points than the other team? Because the other team had a wide open touchdown in the third quarter.
Why was the receiver wide open? Because the defensive back was out of position.
Why was the defensive back out of position? Because he didn't get the signal. That's it!
 
Now we need to problem solve a better way to get the defensive back the signal for the play.
 
For those paying close attention, that was only 4 questions. It does not have to be 5 questions. Could be more. Could be less. Just ask enough questions to get to the problem you need to solve.
 
Some of you might be thinking, if we don't define success, what do we do?
I'll admit it is a subtle nuance but use something like:
  • Objective
  • Desired outcome
  • Hypothesis
Use any verbiage that lessens the absoluteness and increases the perpetual nature of reality.
 
If you didn't follow any of that, I think this Chinese Farmer story by Alan Watts sums up what I'm trying to say:
 
Let's constantly push to broaden our time horizons and solve problems not for today, not for tomorrow but for next year, next decade, next generation(s)...