Refusing to Fail

I did a little searching this weekend on the idea of “refusing to fail” looking for real discussion of what this mentality does to individuals and organizations. As I expected, what I found was a slew of motivational articles, audio books, and speakers discussing how to be more motivated. The contention is that if you can motivate yourself (or your organization) to “refuse to fail”, then you will always be a success. I disagree…

What happens when we refuse to fail? We “do what it takes” to get the job done and show ourselves and our superiors we are reliable! This sounds pretty great, but what happens when that reliance continues? What happens when we do nothing but succeed while taking great personal and professional risk?

Imagine an example in which you receive customer requirements to complete a job and those requirements change at the last minute. You have a couple options: 1) complete the job as originally specified and upset the customer, or 2) adapt! While “adapt” sounds like the best scenario, what about the next time? In the end, you end up spending more time/money/resources on the same customer for very little return. That customer MIGHT tell a friend how accommodating you are, but do you really want more customers doing that to you?

There are many cases in which we need to learn to say NO! Sure, we don’t make friends saying by refusing to help, but we also don’t make friends by overextending our organizations, derailing our vision, and cutting costs/customers. Burning out your employees is NOT productive; There are a slew of psychological factors that I’m not touching on here (e.g. strained employees make mistakes, have health problems, quit, etc…).

So what is the answer? Honesty. Ask your customer if they can pay the difference for the changes. If not, explain that other projects will have to slip costing you time and money. Depending on the cost, sometimes you have to say “NO”. There will always be someone else to pick up the trouble customers, but I remember a quote I once read from one of the ING Direct founders, “the customer is always right, but they’re not always the right customer.”