The Inevitability of Failures
We don't succumb to failure, failure sticks to us. It's a data point, a signal, not a judgement. Of course, I ask: "What now?"
Outline:
Announcements
News and Opportunities
The Frank Insights
The Inevitability of Failures
Welcome to my Newsletter
Thanks to all my readers. I appreciate you! Be a positiv-ator (not a real word) today.
Announcements
Join me in my Watch Party for The Interceptors, in celebration of the Earth Day 2025 brought to us by Story Money Impact, on April 14th at 9am (MST). I’ll provide the link when you DM me so we can simultaneously watch. Donations are welcome.
Before I get carried away with content, please complete the First Reader Survey I sent out a few weeks ago with my Welcome Video. Thanks in advance. And join me as my guest in my first ever Hang-out interviews. See below. 👇👇
Pick my Brain Service - I'm extending this indefinitely for executives and leaders grappling with a particular question/decision-making dilemma regarding their organizational strategies and change efforts. There are so many hot-button issues disrupting purpose-driven organizations and their leaders. Contact me.
The Sentimental Provocateur is open for paid subscription. The Annual Paid Subscriber will also receive….”drum roll”… 1-on-1 coaching/advisory support scheduled 1x/year. We get on a Zoom/Google Meet and discuss practical solutions to painful problems or innovations whether as an individual changemaker or as part of your organization’s leadership. This is a non-metered, subscriber-initiated, and solutions-orientated coaching program. You can bank it for future use too.
Global Voices for Peace Ready for Purchase. A Peace Anthology authored by Susan Hartley and contributed by yours truly and other distinguished Rotary Peace Fellows, Rotarians, and peace luminaries. The book will be launched in Charlottetown, PEI, Canada on April 29th. You can find all the ways to purchase the book here. Invite Susan to speak at your events/programs.
Where Am I Speaking /Writing Next?
The Sentimental Provocateur First Coffee Hang-out will now be a virtual interview with some of the top changemakers in my community. We get on a call, share your thoughts and resources, updates on your work, and how this community can help you. No fluff, just conversations. DM if you want to be on the wait-list of interviewees this year.
LedbyCommunity Ask Me Anything on Social Impact and Community-Building, April 15, 10am (MST). Register here.
The Above the Bar Podcast, April 23 (Online)
??? - This could be your organization/network/university/Board Group/retreat event, DM me.
Opportunities & Events
These opportunities are provided as a bonus for subscription. Please exercise due diligence and contact these providers directly if you want more information.
Youth: Apply for Tilting Futures Take Action Lab, by April 30.
Apply for a Micro-Grant: For women entrepreneurs from North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East by April 31.
Apply for the 2026 Rotary Peace Fellowship Program, Rotary International by May 15 (if you’re serious, I can help)
Register to the 2025 Rotary Calgary Convention and attend all the interesting side-events and exhibit showcases
Apply The Rising Leaders of Mexico Fellowship, by June 22.
The Frank Insights
Peavey Mart, Sunterra, The Hudson’s Bay are closing. The latter is the oldest store in North America, to the tune of 350++ years old. It’s closing in June and I cleaned out my gift certificate for any useful items I can buy with the balance.
First was Zeller, and Sears, previous to that I heard was Eaton’s and the famous eatery, Bonanza back in the early 90’s. Just imagine, those small businesses we don’t hear about, yet folded in a year or so.
People, you need to be adapting to the times not the times adapting to you. Your customers are changing, the norms and values are changing, the external shocks and market stresses are overwhelming, you can’t stay the same and hope the customers will come. You can’t keep on spending hoping that your revenues will catch up. You can’t blame the economy for donors moving away from your nonprofit when you have the ball in your court.
There’s only a few times you can blame the externalities, after that, there’s no mercy for ignoring the signs.
The Inevitability of Failures
Failure is as certain as success or any modicum of that for sure. But what irritate me it’s not that we succumb to it, like succumbing to illness or death or some large misfortunes, without understanding that living is risking to fail every single day. On the contrary it succumbs to us, adheres to us like a sticky rice to a finger toe.
This simple fact confounds too many people. In an imperfect world with imperfect human beings, information, and systems, we can predict the failure rate on almost anything and yet we wonder a lot that ‘how come we failed’ when in fact the data doesn’t lie. It’s still the data even though for the rest of us, we think we’re the Anointed One.
You have failed is very different from the idea that you’re a failure. As Martin Seligman advocated in his Learned Optimism, choosing to be positive in your disposition creates greater opportunities for success in the long term. If you detach your failure as being with failure as doing, then the second problem becomes clarified. The problem is always the “what,” not the “who.”
No Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
Please stop the hindsight bias. Of course, you should, would, could have done this and not that. It’s debilitating and it leads to more paralysis.
Take my own entrepreneurship journey for example. I have poured out a lot of money for different kinds of help only to be feeling lost, overwhelmed, and unable to follow-on on key steps.
Because of these mistakes, I devised a system where timing, costs, effort of execution, and expectation of results are key elements I have to watch out when making purchasing decisions. This is an example of second problem-solved.
I can name that failure in three notes
Remember that game show in the 90s, “Name That Tune.”
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