The Paradox of Success
In the video above, John Kearon talks failure with some leading market researchers and asks what they’ve learned from personal/professional failures, and how those lessons eventually led to success.
These themes are outlined in a paper delivered by John at ESOMAR 2008 in Montreal.
Below though, we put John on the hot seat to hear what he thinks about success and failure, and what this paradox that he talks about actually is. Most importantly, he answers an age-old question: What if Santa doesn’t bring him presents this year.
What is the “paradox” in the Paradox of Success?
That you need failure as a precursor to success.
Why is the focus on failure so important to you? It appears to be a running theme.
Download the Paper
Download John Kearon’s paper on the Paradox of Success delivered at ESOMAR 2008 in Montreal (PDF).
About this Video
BrainJuicer TV is a ScribeMedia/BrainJuicer co-production and includes interviews from leading practitioners and thinkers in the corporate, scientific, branding and media space as we explore change, disruption and innovation across various industries.
You can view our growing video library here, or follow us via RSS here.
Because failure is a taboo, to be avoided at all costs and its essential role in success is ignored or — perhaps more accurately — aggressively denied.
In its place we have the ‘Narrative Fallacy’ i.e., the all too human tendency towards simplifying success stories to be the hero’s journey where the brilliance of the hero can only lead to the success that transpires.
Failure doesn’t play a significant part in the story and randomness/luck of success is completely denied.
What are some important failures you’ve seen across different industries — or even in culture — that you think have lead to game changing innovations?
There are the 10 famous examples I put in the paper: Coke, vulcanised rubber, French fries, Cornflakes, Post Its, Penicillin, Alco-pops, etc.
Additional examples in culture would include the various epochs of art which went through various stages of failure before emerging into a full fledged and accepted new form of expression: flat to 3d, religious to secular, figurative to abstract, modern, etc.
Music and architecture has done the same.
In today’s economic environment, do you think people want to hear about failure as a marker towards success? It seems there’s a whole lot of failure going on. Success, not so much.
It’s a good point.
I started on the theme when everything seemed successful and before we had the catalogue of financial failures.
So it does feel a different environment into which to toss this notion but perhaps it’s helpful because it becomes a message of hope. Just as forest fires are essential to the long-term success of the biodiversity of the forest, so these financial disasters will enable the markets and the economy to come back stronger due to those that survive, and are more diverse due to the oddity of plants that thrive post an apocalypse.
Is failure, or at least failure as a meme, synonymous with being willing to take chances?
It’s related but not really.
The phrase ‘to take chances’ is still associated with assumed success, i.e. you take a risk and take a chance and because you took a chance, it’s a case of ‘bingo’ you hit pay dirt.
Far healthier I feel to embrace experimentation which has at it’s core the assumption of seeking many, many failures to find the eventual successful answer rather than ‘take a chance’ which has at it’s core a ‘one-off chance’ and the hope of striking it lucky the first time without the effort and rounds of failure required to pioneer anything that changes the way things are.
How does someone know that despite all the failures they should go on, and what does it mean to fail responsibly?
You never know and I think failing responsibly is an oxymoron. Edison has a great quote which sums it up for me, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
Give me a failure on your part, one really good failure, that has changed the way that you either do business, or view the market research world.
The first business I set up and gave my whole life to for 5 years, taking almost no salary and pouring in my life savings was pretty successful but gave me absolutely nothing back.
I gave half the business to my partner and then we gave 10% to the first partner and when I resigned as a Director to start BrainJuicer, I discovered that you can do absolutely nothing with 45% of a company to stop the current directors from doubling their salaries and taking the money left in the company for themselves and to effectively make your 45% shareholding so worthless that you eventually sell it to them for almost nothing just to be able to move on emotionally and put it behind you!
What are your predictions for the research industry come 2009?
Two scenarios.
Budgets get squeezed by 5%, it’ll be human nature for cautious research buyers to retreat to what they know and squeeze the big research factories by the same amount, i.e. it’ll be business as usual and incredibly dull.
Budgets get squeezed by 15%, and the cautious option just won’t be an option so these cautious buyers will have to step out of their comfort zone and embrace the new generation of smarter, faster, better online agencies and realise what they’ve been missing out on for the last few years - it’ll be exciting to see the walls of the research factory Jericho come crashing down!
And finally, since it’s holiday season and all: if Santa Claus fails to bring you a gift, how will you interpret this failure?
When Claus fails to bring me a gift, it’ll remind me not to expect chance events to deliver my dreams but to hang the stocking out anyway because me and kids like doing it; and you should do things because you’re moved to do them, not because of the hoped for rewards at the end of them.
Michael Cervieri is a ScribeLabs co-founder and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs where he teaches a course called Tubes, Code and Content. On Twitter, he's @bmunch.
Discussion
No comments for “The Paradox of Success”
Post a comment