A positive look at failure

No self-respecting individual, be a leader or a follower, wants to admit failure. Simply put, most are wired not to accept failure. Because the fear of failure gets drilled into us at the schools itself. Consequently, there is an innate tendency to shy away from talking or discussing failures. Sigmund Freud argued that there is a huge stigma around discussing any kind of failure in society. Failure is a dirty word. To rise up the ranks one has to be invincible, with an unblemished record of success. No wonder, politicians are worst at admitting failures in public.  

The classic work of corporate gurus like Peter Drucker emphasized optimizing personal behavior to achieve individual and organizational peak. It laid emphasis on success as the guiding mantra to surge ahead. Nobody wants to appear failed or defeated, the fear of becoming the outcast is inherent in human psyche. Thanks to social media, however, the fear of failure has now heightened – this is something people growing up have never faced in the past. Too many young people find themselves at risk of fearing failure.

With so many shifts already around, it is perfect time to rethink failure as a subject to be seriously looked into. Failure has taken many forms. There are intelligent failures that one experiments deliberately to learn lessons from. What takes us by surprise are basic failures which include mistakes and slips; and complex failures when a mixture of factors is at play, over which there is not much immediate control. Business journalist Dougal Shaw draws on conversations around failure with entrepreneurs and business leaders to look at these failures in a more positive light. 

To build a positive culture around failure, Shaw lists seven lessons drawn from countless discussions with entrepreneurs and business leaders. It includes mental strategies to rebuild confidence; recalibrate thinking to address crises; insights into turning negative customer reviews; tips to create breakthroughs in failures; and, finding new pathways to success as a team. Overarching key message is that failure can be a signpost to success, only if one would have grit, agility and ambition to seize the opportunities failure presents. 

Fail Smarter is a valuable resource on lessons from failures that could eventually help entrepreneurs carve out huge successes in their ventures. It helps understand and appreciate failure better, and harness the creative opportunities that failure unfolds. Despite increase in number of failures among prospective entrepreneurs, the desire to create a start-up has only increased. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has surveyed societies’ attitudes to entrepreneurship for a quarter of a century and has found that fear of failure among prospective entrepreneurs has sharply increased since 2019. 

Shaw met numerable business leaders who value failures for its harboring learning lessons that can lead to personal growth and resilience. “I wish that I’d known earlier in my career just how important it is to be prepared to fail,” Josh Bayliss, CEO of The Virgin Group said, “because I think that’s when you learn the most.” Dealing well with failure and learning from it is what makes winning entrepreneurs because an entrepreneur is a risk-taker by definition.

Fail Smarter is a veritable meditation on failure, building a positive culture around failure and encouraging people to shift from blame and shame to acceptance and resilience. Since most of what Shaw has been able to capture in the book are soundbites of personal experiences by leading entrepreneurs in dealing with failure. It is indeed an exploration of what took entrepreneurs and business leaders learn from things that go wrong. The most successful leaders seem to focus on what went wrong while building their businesses. 

There is little denying the fact that failure is 90 percent of the journey. Not long ago at the Global AI Summit in 2023, a fireside chat with delegates from Silicon Valley concluded ‘give up the security of the regular pay cheque and be comfortable with failing.’ This is one bitter pill that can help swallow the change. And if a more mature attitude on failure is adopted, accepting failure will generate new ideas in making a good business sense. Fail Smarter enlists many such ideas. The successful leader must lead by example under the situation and lead by example at both receiving and delivering feedback about failure.

The setbacks, failures and difficult moments are often the experiences that shape the biggest breakthroughs. So why is there a stigma around openly talking about them? That’s exactly what Shaw has explored in his book that combines personal stories with practical insights on resilience, growth and learning. Failure can be a key character in the story, but it should not be the narrator.

Fail Smarter
by Dougal Shaw
Profile/Hachette, New Delhi
Extent: 255, Price: Rs, 499.

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine on June 29, 2026.