Reframing failure - how does how we see “failure” affect our ability to achieve success in the future?
Q grading is a universal coffee quality grading system. Its intention was to empower local coffee growers. If they could Q grade their coffee they could then know how to improve and increase its score, get it in the 90s (out of 100) and they had a product they could sell directly to speciality roasters at higher prices than the brokers and world commodity market they currently sold to. This was the goal of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, to become a Q grader as part of his mission, told brilliantly in Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers, to support Yemeni coffee farmers to create a product that empowered them with the potential to earn more and to put Yemeni coffee, the country from which coffee originated, back on the map.
Monk of Mokha outlined the process Mokhtar had to go through to become a Q grader. It was not an easy one. 50% of people fail their first attempt at the 22 part test. One part alone involves 100 multiple choice questions on topics ranging from coffee harvesting, roasting, brewing, processing, and grading.That part is arguably the easiest part. Other parts involve scoring a coffee within 2 points of the Q grade it has been given, another discerning 36 different scents, there are tests to identify an outlier of three cups of coffee, tests to identify the specific acid added to two out of a set of four cups of coffee and another test requiring the student to determine which cup was under- and over-roasted.
In his first attempt Mokhtar did not pass. His instructor informed him he had failed 7 of the 22 tests.
After a brief calculation, Mokhtar’s response was delight to realise he had passed fifteen of the tests. He only had seven more to master.
Mokhtar’s inspiring story, not only sees him eventually become a Q grader but sees him put Yemeni coffee back on the speciality coffee map, helping cultivate the highest Q rated coffee in the world. This snapshot of his response to the test, a test he passes and seems trivial compared to the rest of his adventure, reflects an approach to failure, if that is even an appropriate word for how Mokhtar may see it, that no doubt supported him to overcome many more and many larger challenges on this journey.
Mokhtar’s example mirrors the title concept of Dan Sullivan’s The Gap and the Gain, a concept shared with me by my own coach (which is to say I’m aware of the concept but have not read the book). In situations what do we focus on, the gain or the gap, and what is the impact? For Dan Sullivan, first writing about this he found that the people he worked with would often dwell on the distance from where they are to the outcome, the gap, and fail to see the progress they had made, the gain. In recognising the progress we remind ourselves of the capacities we have to make progress that we can put towards closing the gap.
In Mokhtar’s case he saw he had passed 15 out of 22 of the steps to becoming a Q grader, rather than dwelling on still having 7 tests to pass.
Which brings us to the idea of failure.
When you think of failure, what do you think of? What does failure mean to you? What impact does it have on you?
Do you focus on the gain, the having a go and the learning from that, or the gap, what is still left to do?
A common saying from the start-up world is ‘Fail fast’ as a means of innovating quickly so you find the thing that will really succeed. In this approach, the assumption is that success lives in the land of failure and the only way you are going to find success is to court failure.
A similar sport mantra goes something like to win, you have to be willing to lose or as Brene Brown refers to it, you have to live in the arena, which is an act of vulnerability and courage.
Or closer to home, as my supervisor once reminded me, 80% of life is about showing up.
Yet if the prospect of failure looms largely over us or our teams, how likely are we to show up, to be in the arena, searching for the win and in the search closing the gap?
What would a more useful framing of failure be for you?
How clear is success in each context for you? Often we act knowing what we’re avoiding but less clear on what we want to move towards.
What do we need around us to support us to show up, to go for success and to own the reality that it may not go to plan?
What is the scariest thing about failure for us?
What if the opposite were true?
What if rather than measure or judge ourselves on success or failure we focus on the trying, because in having a go we are already progressing, we are showing up and we are gaining more than we may realise.
As Rebecca Norton said on the Coach’s Journey Podcast, regardless of whether we achieve the goals we set in coaching, we will transform and grow in the work we do towards them, regardless of the outcome.
What would be the framing of failure that best supports you to work towards what really matters?
What could we all achieve if we reframed failure as part of the process?
How can we support ourselves and others to embrace the possibility of failure in service of pursuing what really matters to us?
References
Dave Eggers, The Monk of Mokha
Dan Sullivan, The Gap and the Gain
