Failure’s Win.

“Fail fast” is clearly an oversimplified sound bite.

Once an overly common meme attributed to the practices of making a living of those we call successful.

This has always been an approach that was obscured to me by my understanding of the privilege and responsibility of leadership.

Somewhere, I learned that making a decision actually required deliberation and reflection.

It does not.

At least they are not prerequisites to success.

Decisions can be made without much thought, to be sure. Yet choices can also be arrived upon slowly with the analysis of all details possible and every possible outcome considered with in-depth analysis of the Pro/Con ratio.

Yet neither approach guarantees the result.

The decision maker can end up actually being right with what was thought to be the wrong choice as easily as the right choice may obscure a more beneficial outcome.

A well thought strategy may still miss a hidden detail or an unexpected occurrence.

For this reason it may boil down to the reality that a choice made at center field, as a coin flips through the air, always only has fifty percent chance of being right, no matter how pre game rituals are observed.

In either case, choices always yield at least to outcomes. First, with the experience resulting from the choice itself and second in the evolution of our talent to make choices.

Deliberating over decisions, I have often mistaken the degree of intelligence with the depth of reflection.While wisdom is unquestionably result of experience, he talent to recall past similar circumstances where choices made led to learning opportunities, is made more wise with the acceptance that, past choices are always limited to circumstances that occurred in the past.

Who we were at the time, what we knew, what the environment was that existed, and who we were dealing with all have been weathered by the passage of time since we last faced what looks to be the same decision.

When I was twenty something working with my father I sat painfully as he deliberated for what seemed like forever over choices that seemed so apparently to me as a ” no brainer’ from my youthful view.

I’ve watched my son labor over choices that from the view of the years behind me, reveal to me the actually significance of the choice, as tempered by the awareness that no matter what outcome the choice made leads to it will be right in that he has the gift of time to recover from whatever experience his choice may lead him to.

Over time my own decision-making process morphed as I shifted from the pursuit of acquisition to the confirmation of the brand I wish to be remembered by.

Far too many times I suffered from the paralysis of analysis, forgetful that the outcome can only shift my perspective, not my ability to choose what I see as a result of the choice.

Instead I sat statue like meditating over my work like Dante, as reflected in “The Thinker”. A man consumed with the repeated review of every possible scenario deluded by the belief that there was only one perfect outcome, that might free him from future regret.

Occasionally, the time I indulged in the ping pong process of decision making resulted in the circumstances changing. Taking so long take advantage of an opportunity that the opportunity itself changed.

These deliberations only resulted in adding more pressure to subsequent choices.

Not making a choice is in fact a choice, yet it is a choice that strips us of our power and more importantly of the potential of life experience.

When we delegate the experience of decision making, we deny and discharge ourselves from the sublime responsibility of defining our existence.

When we blame the boss, the bottle, our partner, or the weather, we completely limit the benefit of self determination. This practice robs us of any opportunity to take credit for the choices we made that worked the way we had hoped.

When a choice goes favorably, we call ourselves lucky, yet when a choice fails to meet our hopes, we beat ourselves up.

Eventually FOMO blinds us to how we are always served by the lesson learned from the choice that did not align with our pre choice imagined outcome.

We disregard the opportunity cost of the time, spent frozen with our chin resting on our balled fist in over contemplation.

So why do we make the choice to take so long to choose? I suspect because somewhere, we have learned that when it comes to choice making slow is smart and quick is never a safe bet.

While pausing to consider the possible outcome may have some of us from inserting a fork into an outlet, the old adage still rings true “ He who hesitates is lost“.

In the end, is it making the right choice that truly makes us wiser or is it what choice making teaches us?

The answer depends on the view of who is judging the choice made.

If the observer are amongstthose beyond our selves, it may in fact be the former.

Conversely if the observer is from within our selves, it will always be the latter.

Perhaps the skill we need to learn is not the one we were taught in school, not the ability to pick the right letter on a multiple choice.

Perhaps the talent we are better served by developing in the face of life’s endless choices, is the ability to make choices with the increasingly efficient reflection abilities, and then discern what the choice gave us, intead of what it cost us.

Making the goal of decision making not about passing some test but instead making the goal of every choice to be, learning the lesson the choice offers.