The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success

By Charles C. Manz

The acclaimed author and leadership expert offers inspiration and practical advice on finding the opportunities within life’s obstacles.
 
“Failure” is one of the most dreaded words in the English language. The very idea of failing causes many of us to simply pack up and retreat without even trying. Yet it is through seeming failure that most of life's greatest successes are achieved. In The Power of Failure, Charles Manz provides simple yet profound ways to turn what appear to be failures into the essential steppingstones of achievement. 
 
The Power of Failure offers both inspiration and advice on how failure can provide us with the foundation for long-term success. Along with real-life stories and examples, it contains practical prescriptions for meeting some of life's most common setbacks. These lessons help us take advantage of the opportunities hidden within life’s daily challenges, and show us how we can fail to succeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9781609943745

Charles C. Manz

Charles C. Manz, PH.D. is a speaker, consultant, and bestselling author of Business Without Bosses and SuperLeadership.

Book preview

The POWER of

FAILURE

Other Books by Charles C. Manz

The New SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves

Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr.

(Berrett-Koehler, 2001)

The Wisdom of Solomon at Work:

Ancient Virtues for Living and Leading Today

Charles C. Manz, Karen P. Manz, Robert D. Marx, and Christopher P. Neck

(Berrett-Koehler, 2001)

Team Work and Group Dynamics

Gregory Stewart, Charles C. Manz, and Henry P. Sims, Jr.

(Wiley, l999)

Mastering Self-Leadership:

Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence

Charles C. Manz (Prentice Hall, 1992; Second Edition with Christopher P. Neck, 1999)

The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus:

Practical Lessons for Today

Charles C. Manz (Berrett-Koehler, 1998; softcover 1999)

For Team Members Only:

Making Your Workplace Team Productive and Hassle-Free

Charles C. Manz, Christopher P. Neck, James Mancuso, and Karen P. Manz

(AMACOM, 1997)

Company of Heroes: Unleashing the Power of Self-Leadership

Henry P. Sims, Jr., and Charles C. Manz (Wiley, 1996)

Business Without Bosses:

How Self-Managing Teams are Building High Performance Companies

Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr.

(Wiley, 1993; softcover 1995)

SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves

Charles C. Manz and Henry P. Sims, Jr.

(Prentice Hall, 1989; softcover, Berkley Books, 1990)

The Art of Self-Leadership:

Strategies for Personal Effectiveness in Your Life and Work

Charles C. Manz

(Prentice Hall, 1983)

CHARLES C. MANZ

ThePOWERof

FAILURE

27 Ways to

Turn Life’s Setbacks into

Success

9781605093895_0004_001

The Power of Failure

Copyright © 2002 by Charles C. Manz

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

s1

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650

San Francisco, California 94104-2916

Tel: [phone], Fax: [phone]

www.bkconnection.com

Ordering information for print editions

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone]; www.bkconnection.com

Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone].

Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: [phone]; Fax: [phone]; E-mail: [e-mail]; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-57675-132-9

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-389-5

IDPF ISBN: 9-781-60994-374-5

2009-1

Copyeditor: Patricia Brewer

Text design: Detta Penna

Compositor/production service: Penna Design & Production

Indexer: Joan Dickey

Cover design: Susan Malikowski, Autographix

I dedicate this book to those truly successful people who have made the world a better place by standing a little taller each time they picked themselves up after falling and who gained the wisdom and humility from these experiences to help others to do the same.

Preface

At the outset a question comes to mind, Why write a book focused on failing? First, as you will soon discover, this book is actually a book on a primary secret to success—how to harness the Power of Failure. Nevertheless, the real motivation that led me to write this book is more personal. On many occasions people have said to me something like, You are obviously a very successful person. Don’t you ever fail at anything? By outward appearances, my life may seem to be mostly filled with success, such as having published 12 books and 100 articles or having received a number of awards during my academic career. But frankly I find this kind of comment rather embarrassing.

I’m embarrassed because I know what they apparently don’t: that I have failed far more than I have succeeded. Sometimes people point to one of my previous books. They may point to the success of SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves that I co-authored with my good colleague Hank Sims, Jr., which won a national book award and became a national best-seller. They just see the end result, but I remember how many times we rewrote chapters that weren’t working and the fact that the book was rejected by about 30 publishers before finally being signed by a risk-taking young editor. The truth is that the book almost never saw the light of day.

Or they might point to my career as a professor. I am very fortunate and honored to currently hold the Nirenberg Chair of Business Leadership at the University of Massachusetts. And I previously held appointments at several major universities, including a Marvin Bower Fellowship at the Harvard Business School that was awarded for, in their words, outstanding achievement in research and exceptional promise . . . in business scholarship. What people don’t know is that I struggled a great deal in my early career, first to find a job at all after college and then both in retailing (I truly failed relative to most standards in that brief experience) and in my early years as a young professor. It would be difficult for me to even calculate how many papers I have had rejected by journals, how many students didn’t care for my teaching style, and how many business executives found my consulting to be less than exceptional.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that I consider myself a failure in work and life. On the contrary, I consider myself to be a considerable success. When people say that they think I am a successful person, that is not what I find embarrassing. It’s that they seem to think I do not, never have, and apparently never will, fail in significant ways. What I am saying is that I truly believe that I owe most of the success I have enjoyed to my willingness to fail, to fail repeatedly, and to fail well. That is really why I am writing this book: to give failure the credit it deserves and to hopefully help others discover the rich rewards it offers when it is handled wisely.

This short book is filled with simple ideas about how to use failure in the short run in order to succeed on a long-term basis, throughout a lifetime. It is written for anyone who would like to increase his or her awareness and ability to reap the rewards of the many inevitable failures that we all experience in our lives. This recognition can be a very freeing experience. It can feel wonderful to drop the heavy weight of trying to explain away our human fallibility, of feigning perfection, and of denying that when