It's Okay to Fail: The Importance of Taking Risks

There's an old tale about Hewlett Packard, that the company's culture was one of the first to embrace risk-taking by encouraging employees to take chances, even if they failed, without fear of retribution. The idea was to push employees to think creatively and to make decisions in order for the organization to be innovative and on the cutting edge with their products and services.

The truth of the matter is that in order to succeed you have to anticipate that you might fail. If you ask someone to dance, they may say "no." But someone has to be the first on the dance floor.

Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, once said, "Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low." Of course, many famous people including Peter Drucker have echoed this same sentiment. So what does that mean to you?

Be Willing to Take Risks to Gain Rewards

Before you run off and do something all in the name of innovation, there are some caveats to taking chances and risking failure.

Know your objective. If you have a career goal that will benefit from taking risks and the right opportunity presents itself, then it makes sense to take a leap of faith. But don't go after something risky just to show you are not risk adverse or to allude to an innovative spirit. In the end, be yourself.

Choose the right time. That doesn't mean you should procrastinate; it means you should use common sense. Throwing good money after bad when you can't afford to lose doesn't make sense. Suggesting to your boss how to improve a long-standing department procedure may initially be looked upon with disdain, but in the end you gain more by asking.

Be prepared to learn from setbacks. Part of failure is the chance to learn and grow. And who knows, from your disappointment you may find an even greater opportunity.

Find a good support network. This should be a group of family, friends and colleagues who not only offer their support to you, but whom you support in return. Having that safety net of friendship can take you further than any single innovative idea.

In her 2008 commencement speech to Harvard graduates, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spoke about her past; how she was a divorced, single mother, jobless, and nearly homeless. She called herself the "biggest failure she ever knew."

But what she also said was this: "You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default."

Next time you are faced with the possibility of falling flat on your face, you might want to consider these words and realize that it really is okay to fail.