Spend time vividly imagining exactly how wrong things could go in reality, and you'll often turn bottomless, nebulous fears into finite and manageable ones.
Happiness reached via positive thinking is fleeting and brittle; negative visualisation generates a vastly more dependable calm.
A new book* by Oliver Burkeman supports the intuitive realisation of many NAMs and KAMs, that we learn more from failure than success. In other words, when a project is successful, all of our energy goes into bragging about it, whilst a failure keeps us awake nights, revisiting every step, missed signal and failed KPI…
Provided we have the courage and power to cut our losses, maximise the learnings and move on to try again, the overall result can be positive.
The book deals with examples of many failed FMCG brand variants available at the Museum of Failed Products, Michigan (part of GfK Custom Research, North America). More details of products here. Each failure must have made it through a series of meetings at which nobody realised that the product was doomed. Perhaps nobody wanted to contemplate the prospect of failure; perhaps someone did, but didn't want to bring it up for discussion. The examples are fascinating in themselves, but also reassuring for those marketers and KAMs that feel their little set-back is a one-off…
*The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, by Oliver Burkeman, published next week by Canongate at £15 (guardianbookshop.co.uk )
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