Success or failure

When I started looking up on Google for info about comparison of success and failure, many of the articles I found were USA-written and about school. I read on: that didn't have to convince me that USA is overcome with differences between failure and success, but I had a look through. I started as a skeptic, but the more I read the more I was intrigued.

NY Times said the “secret to success is failure”. Is it? Early in this article it said “Riverdale is one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx.” Private school? Was that necessary? The headmaster, Dominic Randolph, seemed to have changed some of the education facilities for this school – an expensive school. Was that necessary?

For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are 'a patently unfair system' because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. 'This push on tests,' he told me, 'is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.'

The writer then spoke about a different school, the KIPP Infinity middle school in Manhattan which supplied education to students who were black or Latino and from low-income families. Randolph from Riverdale and Levin from KIPP were both, it seems, intrigued with Seligman and his co-writer, Peterson, who had had just finished an 800-page book titled Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification which was, apparently, a “manual of the sanities” and a “science of good character”.

That sounded pretty good, but how would it affect those who finished (or not) Year 7 at school, had attended (or not) a university, and had a job and grew older? Or did they not? Perhaps that one was just supposed to be read by parents whose kids go to any school, even if it wasn't “intensely competitive”.

Next, I found 99U which wrote about Tim Harford's new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure. Harford identified some of the wrong ways to react to failure, including denial, chasing your losses and hedonic editing. The writer said: “We’re so anxious not to 'draw a line under a decision we regret' that we end up causing still more damage while trying to erase it.”

That might have sounded true, but the “recipe for Successful Adaptation” seemed to have too many points:

• try new things
• experiment where failure is survivable
• recognise when you haven’t succeeded
• gather feedback
• remove emotions from the equation
• don’t get too attached to your plan
• practice disciplined pluralism
• finding “a safe space to fail is a state of mind”, and
• imitate the college experience

The “college experience” was the point that frustrated me (funny how it was at the end). I couldn't imagine all of these points worked, at least in Australia, for many or most people. How many people went to “college”? How many would even go to university? How many people do this for their success? Have you ever heard of any of this before?

The next article was from Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business Review – yes, still USA. (Give me a little bit of time, I am attempting to compare USA to Australia!) So this writer had been looking at enterprises for 20 years. She'd already looked at “pharmaceutical, financial services, product design, telecommunications, and construction companies; hospitals; and NASA’s space shuttle program, among others”. Did it even included retail or tourism, which – at least in Australia – are huge enterprises?

Edmondson wrote that a

“sophisticated understanding of failure’s causes and contexts will help to avoid the blame game and institute an effective strategy for learning from failure. Although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organizations, mistakes fall into three broad categories: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent.”

She understood this, but would everyone? She provided a “Spectrum of Reasons for Failure”, from blameworthy to praiseworthy. Looks pretty good, but would everyone understand it?

Onwards to Australia articles. Monthly produced “A rich history of failure: Australian history according to undergraduates”, written by Professor Neve R Stenning-Stihl (really??) in 2014. Methinks this is satire, but have a read and think about it - perhaps that is definitely a printed 'failure' here!

“Many Australians viewed their history sheepishly. In 1841 the average number of sheep per shepherd was 450. In comparison, in 1851 each shepherd was in the care of over 1000 sheep. In the 1840s depression the sheep were burned down for tallow and candlemaking. But the introduction of Alien species to the environment compounded the effects of soil erosion with hooves and the tendencies of European animals to up-route fauna.”

or

“In the 19th-century city, prostitutes occupied a variety of positions. The historical impression of prostitution notoriously has a shady storyline suspect to more probing. Prostitutes are commonly depicted as being very sexually promiscuous. Some historians suggest that the history of prostitution is largely oral.”

Okay okay, I've stopped laughing now....

John McDuling, writing for AFR, looked at the subject with comments which pulled me back onto the straight and narrow road - new start-ups. So what is a “start-up”?

Wikipaedia says that “A startup company... is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service.”

Investopaedia said “A startup is a young company that is just beginning to develop. Startups are usually small and initially financed and operated by a handful of founders or one individual. ... In the early stages, startup companies' expenses tend to exceed their revenues as they work on developing, testing and marketing their idea.”

The Investopaedia explanation is probably much more relevant for start-ups in Australia. McDuling said that 90% of start-ups will fail - “they don't make it to a trade sale or IPO, and are wound up.” He claims that “success is the exception, not the rule.” He says that start-ups are most good, even if they fail - “there are also honest failures, where for whatever reason, it just doesn't work out. And the best venture capitalists expect to back lots of them.” Does the entrepreneur learn from its failure?

Adam Courtenay, writing for SMH last year, titled his article Small business and start-up failure rate: is it a cause for concern? He told us that D&B's economic adviser, Stephen Koukoulas, said that “[t]he high proportion of business start-ups and failures was largely due to a weakness in overall retail spending, he said, but could also be attributed to aggressive competition from large retailers...” Weakness in retail spending? Aggressive competition from large retailers? Oh dear...

Yet those stats aren't just for Australia, they are global, according to Karen Lawson, CEO of corporate start-up accelerator Slingshot. So how is that for Australia, compared to, say, Zimbabwe? Lawson says we need customers and finance and resources, so why don't we have them? Why do we fail?

Is failure a secret to success? Do all the start-ups which fold over actually success, or are they actually failure? Do our school kids need private schools to become success? Do we need a lot more than 10% of start-ups to succeed?

I read too much tonight... maybe I should feel I failed. Or succeeded.

I think I need another red wine.