An unusual advertisement appeared in a London newspaper in 1910:
WANTED: Volunteers for a hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.
It did not work as the advertiser had planned. It was hazardous and bitter cold. It became painfully obvious that a safe return would be, at least, miraculous.
The honor and recognition came from their failure. I reviewed the book, Endurance on Blogcritics quite some time ago. Fine book, great story. From the mouth of deadly failure, Ernest Shackleton led his crew through the travails and dangers of a winter frozen into pack-ice at the bottom of the world as their ship was slowly crushed. They lived on ice floes, braved the currents and winds of the seas near Antarctica, and won immortality when they all got back due to Shackleton's leadership, their courage and seamanship, and the bravery that is like the inventor or scientist's spark or the artist's flash of insight. They beat the odds because they fought hard and smart and they prevailed.
Bob Clarebrough in The Space Review looks at the subject from other points of view. He writes on management and is studying "innovation in the private enterprise space system." He sees Shackleton's successful failure as something for which
... we celebrate his heroic leadership and tenacity which resulted in the rescue and safe return of all his men. The same can be said of the exemplary leadership of Eugene Krantz during the high tension of Apollo 13’s return to Earth. Today, these failures are major sources of learning and are studied by managers around the world as they go about developing their own skills as leaders. That’s why we need failure—it’s how we learn. And the emerging space industry needs it, too.
It would be wrong to call for more failures caused by poor workmanship or downright carelessness. The key point is to plan for failures, value the learning they provide, and act on what has been learned.
He wrote on SpaceX and the recent failure to launch its Falcon I: SpaceX would have learned very little from a successful launch. There would have been no urgent reason to review the design of the rocket, people’s roles and responsibilities, the processes and procedures they used, or the overall project management. Arguably, SpaceX now has significantly more knowledge about launching rockets than other space entrepreneurs who have yet to fly.
He goes on to quote Thomas Watson of IBM, who said, and quotes Thomas Watson of IBM who said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”
In my life I did incredibly well at keeping my failure rate high. Learning from mistakes and not making them again came harder. Still, I learned photography from the Ansel Adams photo book series and a lot of experimenting and learned to see by looking at a lot of photos, paintings, drawings and graphics. Very few people simply succeed. An unbroken procession of successes would be reasonably impossible, boring and not lead to new ways of seeing or thinking. Of course I was not launching spacecraft.
A wonderful book also reviewed when I first started writing for Blogcritics is Inventing Modern America by David E. Brown. David writes biographical sketches of inventors. Many are examples of those whose most lasting discoveries were the result of learning from previous failures and the "lucky" accident (wherein the questing mind sees the possibilities that have opened from the unforeseen event).
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Very interesting, Howard, please do cross-post this to DC