When’s the last time you tried to fail?

In one of my college English classes, I was given an assignment along with everyone else to write a book review. I was getting good grades on these routine assignments, but was sick of writing them. I actually wanted to become a better writer, not just earn a good grade. I decided to risk failure and petitioned my teacher to let me write a fictional story based on a character in the book. If I neglected to put in the effort, I’d accept a failing grade, but I needed him to agree to not fail me simply because I didn’t stick to the assignment or couldn’t write good fiction. After some persuasion, the teacher finally agreed. I worked really hard on that paper because I was a complete novice at writing fiction. I ended up doing ok, but not as well as I would have done writing the book review. That was fine though because I was learning and getting better, something that wasn’t happening writing more book reviews.

Where in life do you need to do something similar? It may be at the office, at home or in your community, but where do you need to resist the temptation for rote, safe success and expose yourself (or your team) to failure? It’s difficult to lead, innovate and create without embracing risk.  It’s impossible to know how far you can go without experiencing not being able to go any further.

Don’t sell yourself short. Getting the grade isn’t as satisfying as learning and getting better.