Failure is an Option

One of the most intense movies I’ve ever watched is Apollo 13, the story of the space mission that was to land on the moon but went awry. Based on the true story of the ill-fated mission, it was a gripping tale starring Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon, and Gary Sinise.

At one point, Ed Harris, playing Gene Kranz at Mission Control in Houston, tells his colleagues that they have no choice but to figure out how to save the astronauts’ lives. “Failure is not an option,” he says – in the movie.

The real Gene Kranz said something like that during the actual crisis, but it took Hollywood to turn what he said into a line both memorable and enshrined in the American cultural lexicon.

In the case of Apollo 13, failure was indeed an option – and three lives hung in the balance. In fact, in anything worth doing, be it space missions, writing a novel, implementing a new program at work, or anything else, failure is always a possibility, and it is always an option. We can experience failure through unforeseen circumstances, and we can choose to fail by the actions we take and the decisions we make.

The question is, is the possibility of failure sufficient to stop us from trying in the first place?

Over the years, I’ve worked for several large organizations, mostly in the corporate and educational fields. Organizations become large for many reasons – marketplace success and natural monopolies (like school districts or county governments) are two of them. One thing all large organizations have in common is the desire to minimize risk.

It’s a natural phenomenon. You become successful, and the desire to remain successful leads you to minimize risk and seek control over things that can upset your success, or challenge your natural monopoly. The problem is that that the desire to control or reduce risk comes with a cost – the stifling of creativity and innovation. Over a long period of time, creativity and innovation can become anti-cultural, which may explain what happens to so many Fortune 500 companies that have disappeared forever.

This desire to avoid risk isn’t limited to large organizations. It also applies to individuals. “It’s our survival instincts that help us judge when to take a risk of failure and when to retreat,” writes Matt Appling in Life After Art. “But we’ve reprogrammed our instincts with the assumption that failure is not an option. So we stay home and protect ourselves from failure and deprive the world of our gifts.”

If we believe in what we’re doing, or what we want to do, we have to accept the reality that failure is an option. Creativity is dangerous. It upends the status quo. It challenges vested interests. It challenges the whole notion of “this is how we do things here.” If we are being creative, we should expect opposition, or worse, indifference.

Failure is always an option. The fear of failure is always present.

We can play it safe. Or we can choose to create, knowing we may fall flat on our faces.

We’re discussing Life After Art over at The High Calling. To see the discussion, please visit the site.

Photograph: The damaged Apollo 13 Service Module, seen after separation from the Command and Lunar module; via Wikipedia.

A Glimpse of Heaven

We know these times when they happen, possibly because they’re so rare – everything falls into place; everything works as intended; things go well. Your life seems to hum with purpose. Every day is a welcome adventure.

Katie Davis is back “home,” home being her village in Uganda. She and her parents have agreed that she belongs where her heart is. She returns to find her family growing, new children arriving, the program expanding and new needs to be met.

She rolls with everything. This is what she’s meant to do and where she’s meant to be. There is an assurance in her heart that is like a song – and much of this chapter in Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption sounds like a song, or perhaps a psalm.

I can look back at my own life and see times when everything seemed to go wonderfully, and times when things didn’t seem to go at all. I had a great junior year in high school – and a not-so-great senior year until the very end. There were times when great things happened at work, and times when they didn’t. There have been a lot of mountaintop experiences, and a lot of valley experiences.

Even in the good times, there were conflicts, challenges, problems, and upsets. And you know these times when they’re happening.

You are where you’re supposed to be.

You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

And things are happening; you see the effects and the results.

But you need the other times, the difficult and unhappy times, as a reference point, but also more than that. Success can be blinding, and a trap, for organizations, people, governments and nations.

You think because things work well they will always work well. And you learn from failure more than you do from success. Success can teach a false independence, while failure can teach the right kind of dependence on God and other people.

All of these times together comprise a life.

For Katie Davis, at this point in early 2009, it’s a time when she seems firing on all cylinders. It’s a good feeling and a good time. She’ll remember it – she’ll need to remember it – when the serious challenges arrive.

Led by Jason Stasyzen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie. To see more posts on this chapter, “A Glimpse of Heaven,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.