Nobody likes to fail.  We think failure is the opposite of success.  In organization life, failure is unacceptable.  It demands action.  It requires a response.  It gets you fired.  It is better to maintain the status quo and achieve mediocre results than to take a risk and fail.

Unless you are an effective change leader.

If you are an effective change leader, failure is a part of the process of achieving success.  Failure is data.  It’s information that helps you understand more about what it will take, or not take, to create a successful outcome.  It’s a sign that it’s time to make a change.

Get low scores on stakeholder satisfaction surveys?  Maybe it’s time to do a needs analysis or review design specifications.

Continuing to miss project deadlines?  Maybe it’s time to rework the project plan or assess whether you have the right resources.

Project teams not performing?  Maybe it’s time to learn what makes each individual tick or adjust your management style to be more effective.

Failing again and again?  Maybe it’s time to understand the root causes and systemic challenges (rather than continuing to treat problems with band-aids).

Change agents, innovators, entrepreneurs, R&D professionals, athletes and high achievers of every kind see failure as part of the continuous process of improving.  Failure is the feedback we need to adapt our efforts in the direction of our objective.

If you are a change leader who cares about success, then you may want to rethink your response to failure.  Instead of irritation, try curiosity.  Instead of hiding it, highlight it.  Instead of scolding those who fail, embrace them and have them share what they learned.

Failure is achievement because it shows we are reaching for something far beyond our immediate capability.  Even when we falter, we learn, grow and are strengthened for the challenge ahead.

Dave Berzack loves his career.  Check out his website, www.daveberzack.com, and you will see more evidence of the passion, and talent, he has for his chosen profession.  (Shout out to Dan Schawbel for pointing me to this video.)

Droppin science (here’s the secret) for live (for a great) 9 to 5 (career):  It’s about finding your passion.

Said in geeky consultant language:  The key to high levels of performance and achievement is aligning your work with your sources of intrinsic motivation . . . It’s about finding your passion!

When you can get out of bed every morning with the same spirit and sense of fun that Dave shows, you have found your bliss.  And bliss leads to the biggest career reward of all:  satisfaction.  If your goal is to make millions of dollars, well, success will depend upon your career choice, your effort and a bit of luck.  But if your definition of success is to have a sense of purpose and meaning,  to thrive and to have a consistent source of satisfaction, then build your work around what you love.

A young student from my alma mater called me a few months ago to learn more about the consulting profession.  He did a nice job of providing a verbal resume outlining his well-chosen major, his proper corporate summer internship and the reasons why that prepared him for an entry level job in consulting.  Based upon the facts alone, he was a good candidate for a job in the field.  Based upon the level of excitement in his voice, however, I was compelled to ask another question.

“What do you do for fun?”

He responded by saying, “Since I was a little kid I’ve played hockey.”  And for the next ten minutes told me about playing in hockey leagues four seasons every year, reffing for younger leagues when he was in high school and during the summer, coaching hockey at summer camps and meeting his favorite players at various events.  His tone was entirely different.  You could hear the smile in his voice.

“What are you doing with that?”  I asked.  Silence.

Not everyone can be a professional hockey player.  Not everyone can get a job in the hockey industry on a team, a league office, or an equipment manufacturer.  Although the more we talked, the more he discovered his options were much greater than the “conventional” jobs found in the college placement office.  He realized there were countless careers in the hockey world that were not just about playing.

More importantly, the more we talked, the more he realized there were aspects about hockey that could be translated to other potential career choices.  He enjoyed the camaraderie.  He enjoyed the competition, but he really valued the learning and growing and hard work, whether winning or not.  He also really enjoyed the teaching and development of others when reffing and coaching.

We didn’t have to talk any more about consulting.  He was fired up to listen to his heart and think about options that were more closely aligned with his innate talents, interests and joy.  He may yet end up in consulting, but if he does, it will be when he discovers it is the best place to live his purpose.

Oh, yeah, and by the way . . . If you are on the other end of this and looking for the job candidates who are going to knock your socks off, remember that no matter how killa the resume, you have to listen to the heart of the candidate.  It’s the employees who work from a sense of purpose and passion that will always, always kick it.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man…It is more powerful than the external circumstance. Seneca

Change is best led by those who have sailed in broken boats.  Because the lessons learned from adversity are more powerful teachers than the lessons of success.  Navigating change with the insight and preparation required to achieve broader and more satisfying results, requires the experience of fixing broken masts and torn sails with duct tape, chewing gum and a whole lot of adaptive ingenuity.

When searching for your program managers, change leaders or other key project resources ask them to tell you about their failures and mistakes.  Those stories will tell you more than their academic or corporate pedigree.  The deception of the perfect resume is that it doesn’t reveal the perfect knowledge required to lead change.

Seek change leaders who have weathered the storm and you will find leaders with the courage and spirit to stay the course.

How to love.  How to live.  How to fix anything.  How to lose weight.  How to stop worrying.  How to find your passion.  How to train your dog, bird, cat or dragon.  How to make money.  How to get into college.  How to stay in college.  How to interview.  How to get a job.  How to get a good paying job.  How to start a business.  How to sell.  How to manage projects.  How to manage time.  How to set goals.  How to influence people.  How to negotiate anything with anybody.  How to teach.  How to train.  How to write.  How to retire.  How to survive the end of the world.

We live in a “How-To” world.  A quick search of “How To” in Amazon.com yields over 300,000 books with the phrase in the title.  The popular For Dummies series has over 1700 titles and the Idiot’s Guide series has nearly as many.  And take a look at your local newsstand and you’ll see magazine covers littered with articles telling you the 5 things you must know, the 3 insider secrets that will guarantee success, or the 7 steps to improved performance.

We love quick solutions that are easy to identify and implement.  It is comforting to think that the answer to all of our problems—with romance, with money, with business—can be provided with a few simple action steps or the application of a “best practice.”

We know through our own experience, however, that the How-To’s don’t always solve the problem because they rarely have the depth required to affect our particular situations.  The quick fix might get us part of the way there or solve the problem momentarily, but inevitably we revisit the same issue again and again looking for another band aid to stop the bleeding.

Here’s the deal . . . Managing change well is not about a quick fix.  It’s about a mindset.  It’s not about a multitasking shortcut or a cell phone app.  It’s about consistently applying the disciplines of listening, understanding, adapting, learning, changing, creating, inventing, and engaging.

So, go ahead and stock up on the tools, templates, technologies and How-To manuals.  They will help you get started and be a reference when you get stuck.  But then, let go.  Roll up your sleeves, dig a little deeper, let your mind take flight, color outside of the lines, play, innovate and have fun with the real, collaborative work required to create sustainable change.

Will Smith

I believe in the power of New Year’s resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions represent our desire to be better than we are, to grow, and to improve.  They represent our dreams, our hopes, and our aspirations.

No matter whether they are big goals like changing our life or career direction, or more focused objectives, like losing 5 pounds, New Year’s resolutions represent our desire to create change.  And just like all great change management, they require the ability to create a clear vision of the future and the desire to set out on a path to achieve it.  They require stretching beyond a comfort zone and dedicating ourselves, or our organizations, to continuous improvement.

So, for those of you who, like me, engage in the annual, if not ongoing process of creating personal and organizational change, I offer the above video as inspiration.

Will Smith shares his personal insights and suggests that greatness is much easier to achieve than it seems.  He talks about well-known, enduring, and yet often overlooked principles such as focus, hard work, dedication and above all, belief.  He shares his conviction that we have a spiritual responsibility to make everything we come into contact with better.

I especially like his example of spending 18 months with his brother rebuilding the wall on the front of his father’s business.  “You don’t set out to build a wall,” Smith states.  “You say I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. And you do that every single day and soon you have a wall.”

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins states, “Good is the enemy of great.  And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.”

Maybe if we thought a bit more like Will Smith and made the pursuit of one-brick-at-a-time greatness our spiritual responsibility, change would not be so hard to achieve.

Here’s to a great 2010!