The power of failure

When you fail what do you usually point to? Writing this I realise what an emotive subject failure is. What is failure after all. When I fail, I like to think I see the failure as my own. I recently shared a post promoting the message……

“You only fail when you stop trying”

I have listened to several podcasts where the message has been one of not being afraid of failure. One guy (David Goggins) even said…

“I am going to fail, I am going to fail, I am going to fail, I am going to fail, I am going to fail, I am going to fail, I am going to fail”

That is a lot of failing. But the message is simple. Failure is not to be feared. The younger generation have coined the term

“Epic Fail”

What does that mean?? Have they also realised the benefit of embracing failure? We are told that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Perhaps this is because we review our failures more than our successes. I can certainly say that my father has reviewed my failures more than my successes.

Perhaps we should be celebrating failure for the learning outcomes it delivers. We as humans love a good excuse for failure. I failed because I didn’t have the support of my colleagues. I failed to secure buy in from my stakeholders. I failed because I didn’t have the resources.

Resourcefulness has become a buzz word for me. I admire those who can find unique ways of looking at things. In his book “David & Goliath” Malcolm Gladwell dedicated an entire chapter to facing and overcoming adversity. In the book Gladwell asked the question…….

“Would you wish a learning defect on your child?...... Would you???”

That chapter really resonated with me. I was born with a stutter which could get so bad in my younger years I would stop talking. Whilst I appreciate a stutter is not a learning defect it could have been if I had allowed it.

Having a stutter taught me to overcome adversity. It taught me how to fight because I found controlling my emotions difficult at a young age. However, over time I learned how to laugh at myself. It taught me avoidance strategies. A stutter teaches you that some words are more problematic to say. You avoid them and employ alternates.

In my twenties I chose to ditch the avoidance strategies and embrace my stutter for the super power it is. I am proud to stutter. It gives me massive differentiation. Who wants to be normal anyway? Normal is boring.

So how does this relate to energy management? I think stories of adversity relate massively to energy management. We often find ourselves trying to convince others to either change their behaviour or invest large sums of money on Energy reduction projects.

Energy efficiency is all about being entrepreneurial. Once one of your energy experiments has been proved to save energy you then look to replicate that success elsewhere.

This is where entrepreneurial spirit surfaces like a killer whale. Your ideas develop and you run with them. You study your data and re-examine your calculations. Others tell you that your ideas won’t work but I rarely hear them let alone listened to them. I remember a former line manager of mine once said to me.

“Jeremy, I think you will find that it has never been done before because it can’t be done”

I remember thinking.

“Thanks, you have just motivated me massively”

Thinking back that was a very difficult heating upgrade project. To be fair I think I had a little luck with the engineers who turned up to install the new gas supply. They had to drill through 3 foot of solid stonewall and I remember them telling me that the job was a hairs breadth away from being terminated.

Some people say you make you own luck. Is luck a resource? Does being resourceful make you lucky? I think it does. Maybe the way we choose to approach problems determines how lucky we are? The saying goes that enthusiasm is infectious. I am starting to believe that being resourceful makes you more resourceful.

When I first became an Energy Manager, I was amazed to find out that my annual energy reduction target was a 1% reduction on energy consumed the previous year. I was amazed by the lack of ambition.

Unfortunately, this was the short-sighted thinking of local authority goal setting. 1% what was that about? A little while later I came across the 10:10 campaign. This campaign was aimed at encouraging organisations to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% for 2010.

To sign up for the campaign an organisation had to determine a 12month base line period of consumption that finished in 2010. I think I chose the period of July 2009 – June 2010 as my base line period. The following 12months (July 2010 – June 2011) became my 10:10 campaign year.

It was at this time that I was told that, the worst thing you can do as a local authority employee is set a target and not achieve it. The local authority I worked for was very reluctant to sign up for the 10:10 campaign as they believed it was achievable.

I thought a 10% reduction was achievable and argued to sign up. Several arguments later I was granted permission to sign up and set about proving my short-sighted colleagues wrong.

“With big goals comes massive motivation”

A wise man once said “With big goals comes massive motivation” Was I now motivated? You bet! Incredibly motivated. Did this new motivation change the way I worked? It certainly did. If I had to talk to an awkward staff member about changing their behaviour, did I shy away from them? Hell no!!! I confronted them head on.

12months later the results were in and I had reduced consumption on my base line year by 9.4%. That was a phenomenal achievement. I was chastised for not achieving my target. Can you believe that??????

Whilst I accept that I had failed to achieve a 10% reduction. Achieving a 9.4% reduction was still absolutely huge and had a massive impact on our energy budget. I had proved the utter futility of the long established 1% reduction target. To be fair. I blew it out of the water and changed the way target setting was implemented from there on.

Target or goal setting is an interesting subject. Roger Bannister set a target of running a sub four-minute mile, at a time when the world considered it impossible. More recently Eliud Kipchoge aimed to run a sub 2 hour marathon. Whilst we know the outcomes of these examples. I wonder if Bannister and Kipchoge ever considered not setting their targets for fear of failing to achieve them? I think we know the answer.

My advice is to set unimaginable targets and work like mad to achieve them.