Quotes About Failure

The action plan is a statement of intentions rather than a commitment. It must not become a straitjacket. It should be revised often, because every success creates new opportunities. So does every failure.

The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends. These determine ultimately success or failure of an organization and its efforts. Such changes, however, have to be perceived; they cannot be counted, defined, or classified. The classifications still produce the expected figures—as they did for the Edsel. But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior.

1. The first is simply not to try to be clever. Innovations have to be handled by ordinary human beings, if they are to attain any size and importance at all, by morons or near-morons. Incompetence, after all, is the only thing in abundant and never-failing supply. Anything too clever, whether in design or execution, is almost bound to fail.

Any existing organization, whether a business, a church, a labor union, or a hospital, goes down fast if it does not innovate. Conversely, any new organization, whether a business, a church, a labor union, or a hospital, collapses if it does not manage. Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.

Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.

Teams fail—and the failure rate has been high—primarily because they do not impose on themselves the self-discipline and responsibility that are required precisely because of the high degree of freedom team organization gives. No task force can be "permissive" and function. This is the reason why the same young educated people who clamor for team work tend so often in reality to resist it. It makes tremendous demands on self-discipline.

Or—most tricky of all—a boss whom you admire fails in the crucial duty of a boss: to support, foster, and promote capable subordinates.

What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures. When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred.

High and holy ambition--to be a saint--is not opposed to holy humility--total reliance on God's grace. Exactly the opposite. Ambition without humility is ambition that fails. It is pride, which goes before a fall (Prov 16:18). Humility without ambition is false humility.

the Western form of ignoring real spiritual evils by building a technological heaven on earth. Both are doomed to failure

And why do we fall, Master Bruce? So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up.

So while the smaller fast growers risk extinction, the larger fast growers risk a rapid devaluation when they begin to falter.

When a change management fails, leadership change is brought in. A leadership change will always bring in change management

Mastery of creative tension transforms the way one views "failure." Failure is, simply, a shortfall, evidence of the gap between vision and current reality. Failure is an opportunity for learning—about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies that didn't work as expected, about the clarity of the vision. Failures are not about our unworthiness or powerlessness.

Conflict manipulation is the favored strategy of people who incessantly worry about failure, of managers who excel at motivational chats that point out the highly unpleasant consequences if the company's goals are not achieved, and of social movements that attempt to mobilize people through fear.

Failure is, simply, a shortfall, evidence of the gap between vision and current reality. Failure is an opportunity for learning—about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies that didn't work as expected, about the clarity of the vision. Failures are not about our unworthiness or powerlessness.

we dubbed this host of problems the "true believers syndrome" and realized it is a primary reason that promising innovations often fail to spread. The

Watson told her that the sorry help at Chatham Bend these days couldn't pour piss out of a boot that had the instructions written on the heel.

whatever his circumstances and surroundings, it was only a dead imagination that could call him a failure.

fundamental nature of success: it's hidden among failures.

fail and fail often—but keep the cost of each failure low, so that you can keep going until you succeed.

Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead.

But look at the aspirations of that rabbit and look at his failing. A little life trying. And all the time it was hopeless. But the rabbit didn't know that. Or maybe did know and kept trying anyhow. But I think he didn't understand. He just wanted to do it so badly. It was his whole life, because he loved the cats.

Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead. Upon him the contempt of three planets descended.