What is Your Plan for Failure?

What is my plan for failure?  What are you talking about?

I thought this blog was about Planning for Success, Overcoming the Odds, Persevering to and through the End.... and all that good and positive shit.

Hear me out on this.

Let me introduce a concept to you.

If you have a long term problem you are trying to solve, a goal you are working for or an objective you are trying to attain and you haven't thought about it enough or planned well enough to consider failure as an option then.....

You are destined to fail and create a bigger problem than you initially were trying to address.

Any effective plan or effort has, at its core, an analysis, a study, thoughtful consideration to what can go wrong and a listing of measurable and trackable milestones - stepping stones along the way.... that indicate the plan is working or not working... that intermediate progress is being made to a longer term endpoint or that failure is imminent.

Too complex a notion?

Ok.... let me give you a very specific example involving CrossFit.

For the past 6 weeks, I've attended and closely observed the trainers, participants, specific exercises and prescribed workouts.

Let's focus on one aspect of that overall activity - a specific exercise that is to be done..... you can pick any exercise.  Let's say it's some sort of clean from the floor to overhead.  It's just an example so go with it.

The first thing that happens is that the coach / trainer / WOD leader goes through the exercise explaining the specific mechanics / body position that should be achieved at each stage of the motion - address the bar, bend at the knees, head up, shoulders back, engage the core, drive from the floor, shrug with straight arms, elbows out, clean to a resting shoulder position, bend at the knee, drive the bar overhead, etc.

So there is a specific set of sequential instructions that must be properly executed to make a safe and successful lift.

Then the coach goes over some common mistakes / poor lifting technique to avoid - in other words, the antithesis of what you are supposed to do -  a way not to do it..... a way of indicating you are failing.

And finally, if the lift is a 3 rep max or some sort of maximum effort, the coach will tell you when to "opt out" or abort the lift and drop the bar or get out from under it.

So here's how it goes down.... Each athlete starts out doing a run through of the mechanics of the lift.... maybe starting with no weight at all for some.....going through the proper motions.... rehearsing a successful chain of events to get the weight from point A to point B..... then weight is increased to a prescribed maximum.

I've seen this time and time again - guys and girls attempting max lifts, exercising good form in a maximum effort and getting it to a certain point and then in an instant at a critical point realizing...

"Hey I'm not gonna get this..... I've got to get out from under this X hundred pounds or it's gonna bury me!"

And they FAIL..... But they fail SAFELY AND WITH NO LONG TERM ADVERSE EFFECTS.

They executed a Plan for Failure!

They knew what Failure looked like or felt like at the optimum moment of maximum effort and pivot point between success and failure.

Any successful plan or effort has at its core a detailed analysis, an anticipation, a proactive approach to recognizing and reacting to the plan not working..... call it contingency planning.

A Small Business Plan will have a list of Milestones and Schedule with specific quantitative values such as $ invested by such and such date, Total Revenue at the 6 month after opening mark, Overhead % of revenue, etc. AND it will have contingency planning for addressing problems if the milestones are missed anywhere in the process.

So the next time you plan anything, make sure you plan for Murphy's Law.....

What can and Will Go Wrong.

Because there's an interesting anomaly in this ole World....

Those that focus on addressing the potential for FAILURE.....

 End up being the ones with the most SUCCESS.

Funny how that works isn't it?