Kintsugi: The art of managing failure

Risk, loss, and failure are a part of life.

No one is shielded from them.

Yet, we are hardwired to maximize gains and avoid losses at all costs.

If you are a leader making high-judgment decisions all the time, you are doubly vulnerable to failure.

So what should you do? Should you make risky moves that maximize profit and give a meteoric career rise? Or should you be conservative and minimize risk, therefore preventing a career death knell?

My take?

I have observed three strategies. Two successful, and one dangerous:-

1. Advantageous divergence
2. Fail Spectacularly, But How You Fail Matters
3. The 'Gambler' mindset

Advantageous divergence

A.G. Lafley

Lafely, the CEO of P&G bet big on Tide Pods. The pods took 12 years to perfect and failed in consumer research along the way. But Lafley continued to invest in this innovation, knowing that if it succeeded, it could deliver a huge upside for the company.

When they were finally launched, Tide Pods disrupted the laundry detergent industry and created a new premium segment of all-in-one dose detergents. They generate over $1.5 billion in annual sales. And P&G holds a 78% share of the category.

Lafley was strategic. He broke protocol because he was confident of a high likelihood of success.

Arguably, had the Pods launch failed, Lafley’s legacy might have been less squeaky clean.

Fail Spectacularly, But How You Fail Matters

Even failing spectacularly can have benefits. But it depends on how we fail, and where.

Failing as a startup founder is a feather in the cap while interviewing for jobs in Silicon Valley because it signals entrepreneurial drive and creativity.

Steve Jobs

The late Steve Jobs is a shining example of failing spectacularly and then coming back to change the world. He learned from his failures and then succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams.

For some others who failed publicly and spectacularly due to fraud or malpractice, it will take a lot more to make a respectable comeback.

Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes was the world's youngest self-made female billionaire with a net worth of around $4.5 billion. She fell fast and hard when it was discovered that the needleless blood-testing diagnostic technology she was selling was unproven and flawed. Today she is serving time in prison.

Adam Neumann

Adam Neumann, the CEO of We Work, successfully created a cult of ‘we-dom’ - a community that believed in the kumbaya of working in a ‘physical social network’. He successfully got billions of investments but was unsuccessful in delivering profits. His fall from grace was spectacular. But he has managed to claw his way back - his new residential real estate startup Flow was valued at more than $1 billion by Andreessen Horowitz in 2022.

The 'Gambler' mindset

There is only a thin line between profit maximization and gambling. Gamblers play out of desperation, not a well-calculated risk-taking ability.

Bruno Iksil

One of the most famous risk-takers in recent memory is JP Morgan’s “London Whale,” Bruno Iksil, who doubled down on a losing bet rather than admit his losses and cost the bank over six billion. When Iksil’s calls and emails from that deal were analyzed in court, it was concluded that his state of mind was not one of confidence in well-calculated financial algorithms, but desperation.

This was work. But what about 'return on investment' in personal life?

The true measure of a life well lived

We try to balance profit and risk in both our work life and personal lives. We choose to invest time, emotions, and finances into some relationships and jobs over others because we hope to get a 'return on our investment' - a feeling of community, love, learning, respect, well-being, and of course a healthy bank balance.

In the end, a life well lived is one where we end up with net gains. The problem is that our life’s balance sheet is subjective – it cannot be put into a neat little equation of assets and liabilities.

So how do we define and measure the net gains of our life?

The psychiatrist Robert Waldinger has answered this question for us. He ran the world’s longest study – The Harvard Study of Adult Development. In the study, He followed the lives of 724 men and studied what made a fulfilling life.

The conclusion? The answer to a life well lived is not fame, money, or designations, but the strength of relationships. Men who had invested in and had built relationships they knew they could count on when things got rough, were happiest and healthiest well into their 80s.

See the famous Ted Talk here.

We can draw a parallel to the fuzzy logic of brand equity from this.

The true measure of brand equity

We have millions of metrics by which to know if the brand has a strong equity - sales, distribution, loyal consumers, returning users, time spent on the website, bounce rate, etc.

But the true measure of brand equity is the passion consumers feel.

The queues outside an Apple store whenever a new iPhone is launched.

The Maggi-love demonstrated when Maggi was out of circulation in 2015.

And the Taylor Swift Eras tour that boosted the economy by $1 billion!

All these are examples of true great brands.

Finally, Kintsugi

No matter how grand the tapestry of our existence, my dear friends, we must come to terms with an undeniable truth - loss and risk are inescapable companions on our life's journey.

As we navigate life, we get bruised and cracks start to show.

Enter the enchanting world of kintsugi, a cherished Japanese art form. Kintsugi is the craft of mending pottery, not with glue, but with gold.

Kintsugi celebrates and reveres the beauty in life's fractures, for it is within these very crevices that delicate shoots of hard-earned wisdom sprout and flourish.

The richness of our experiences is etched deep into our psyche in the form of the furrows on our foreheads, our laugh lines, and our stretch marks. Not even industrial-strength erasers can rid us of them.

So, isn't the whole point of life to accept and celebrate the imperfect beings we already are and will always be?