What if the reason why you are afraid to fail is you are doing it wrong.
When I was learning to rollerblade I learned how to fall on flat ground first. Once you fall many times - you aren't afraid to take bigger swings cause you already know how to land badly, without hurting yourself much.
"Good pilots are quick, cheap and easy" - something struck a chord with me during my behavioral science lesson.
We’re afraid to fail because we treat failure like a final exam. We build this big, bloated thing that must succeed. Otherwise… we fall apart.
But what if we stopped building to win and started testing to learn?
What if, like smart startups, we designed small tests at every step to validate our (often wrong) assumptions?
Instead of trying to make our book a success before we’ve written a word, we write in public, daily.
Instead of organizing a big 100-person event, we run a few small ones and learn what works and what "fails".
Instead of launching a company-wide transformation campaign, we test changing one behavior in one team.
When you take this approach, “failure” just becomes feedback. You tweak and try again tomorrow. Not a big deal!
Sometimes in life, we have no choice but to make big bets and go for it with high stakes involved.What would a road of tiny bets look like instead?
PS Ever wonder how the world’s best comedians succeed every time with their big-stage shows? They don’t guess. They workshop every single joke in tiny clubs one at a time - they run a bunch of pilots. Quick, cheap and easy. So when it's a big day - there's no guessing involved.
