Failure is Not an Option …or is it? Questions to Ask Yourself

Who first said: “Failure is not an option”? Was it some military general of yore leading his troops into battle with the enemy in pursuit of victory for country, honour and life? Or a visionary entrepreneur with some potentially disruptive technology, driven by his/her goal of dominating or even eliminating the competition? Or perhaps a mega business tycoon on yet another venture destined to increase his/her billions?

Turns out it was actually quite mundane – the term was coined by Bill Broyles, a scriptwriter for the movie “Apollo 13”! But there is a backstory that I do find interesting, demonstrating that “failure is not an option” is more than just a pithy phrase:

From WIKIPEDIA I learned:
Eugene Francis “Gene” Kranz (born August 17, 1933) is an American aerospace engineer, a former fighter pilot, and a retired NASA Flight Director and manager. Kranz served as NASA’s second Chief Flight Director, directing missions of the Gemini and Apollo programs, including the first lunar landing mission, Apollo 11. He is best known for directing the successful efforts by the Mission Control team to save the crew of Apollo 13.

“Failure is not an option” was in fact coined by Bill Broyles, one of the screenwriters of Apollo 13, based on a similar statement made not by Kranz, but another member of the Apollo 13 mission control crew, FDO Flight Controller Jerry Bostick, who said:

“As far as the expression ‘Failure is not an option,’ you are correct that Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on “What are the people in Mission Control really like?” One of their questions was “Weren’t there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?” My answer was “No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution.” I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, “That’s it! That’s the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it.” Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history.

The real Gene Kranz then went on to publish his bestseller entitled: “Failure Is Not An Option”

As one who has experienced my good share of failures, and have helped my clients deal with their multitude of failures, real and perceived, here is my thinking on failure not being an option:

Many of our failures have actually turned out to be for our good. “What a good thing this happened or did not happen,” we hear ourselves saying after the failure. Think about one of your major failures. In hindsight, did this failure at what you so desperately wanted, or were given responsibility for, work out for the best? Did it take you in a new direction that turned out to be better than what you originally thought? Or did you learn a really deep life transforming lesson? At the least, life went on somehow. Failure was not the end of the world – indeed, it may have been the beginning of something even better.

So if out of failure can come good, shouldn’t we at least consider failure as an option? Failure to do so, mind the pun, leads us down the road of playing safe, not seeing the risks, or being in denial about them, and not being open to opportunities. Seth Godin, well-known entrepreneur and author, gets right down to it, making a direct link between failure and success: “If failure is not an option, neither is success. Innovation is just repeated failure till you come up with something that works.”

The next time you are considering a major decision, have a goal to achieve, or a strategy to implement, stop a moment and explore failure as an option. Here are some questions you might ask:

• What’s the worst thing I can imagine happening in pursuit of this goal?
• And what’s even worse than that?
• What would be the impact on the goal if this happens?
• What would the impact on others be?
• What would the impact on me personally be?
• How would I feel if this happened?
• How do I think I might respond to this failure, this “worst thing imaginable”?
• What might I do differently now, based on this scenario?

I am not positing that you should seek to fail – of course, you should have every intention of, and commitment to succeeding. But taking a step back and considering failure as an option prepares you for the possibility of it, thus making you more capable of responding proactively and early, with urgency but without panic.

Once you have explored the possibility of failure, and faced your fear of it, refocus on your goal – are you seeing it differently? Are you seeing the way to it differently? New options perhaps?

Look at failure through new eyes – as a process of trying, learning, improving. You will become more creative and innovative, and so will your team – committed to succeed, motivated to keep trying, and not despondent when there is failure, just ready and willing to learn from it.
Now go forth and succeed with this thought: that maybe failure is just an option we choose not to take.