Turning failure to advantage is a strength that marketing professionals come by quite naturally. Marketing involves risk-taking and courting the potential of failure that's inherent in every new campaign.
So why do direct marketers have entirely contradictory points of view about professional failure?
Leo Burnett said, “When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one — but you won't come up with a handful of mud, either.” Burnett's perspective supports the idea that failing is not just something you put into the negative column and forget about. There is great value in taking chances and learning what works and what doesn't.
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Many people can give lip service to this notion, but a hard-charging Dallas executive and candidate for a top marketing position at a global consulting firm impressed the hiring manager by recounting one of her biggest failures. She told CareerJournal.com, “When I became vice president of marketing for my last firm, I launched a branding program that required every partner to adopt a consistent approach to marketing and sales.” That approach failed colossally because it went against the freewheeling culture of the organization where every partner did their own thing. As her plan failed, she changed course and adopted a more conventional program that matched the firm's way of doing things. Not only did she create a win through this change, but she also impressed the hiring company with her willingness to admit the mistake and describe what she learned from the experience. This, more than anything else, convinced her interviewers that she was the ideal candidate for the job.
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Joe was an IT director in charge of several technology teams in a growing business environment. Within this group were several newly promoted junior managers who were the designated supervisors of specific teams. In a short period of time Joe recognized that while all the new IT managers had been top performers as individual contributors, these rookies were all terrible managers who demonstrated little promise for future improvement. Joe looked closely at these individuals and saw there were two reasons behind their inability to perform well. Some of them hated being managers and simply did not like the new role. Others wanted to be managers but didn't know how.
Over the next few months, Joe transferred the people who hated the management role back to various technical assignments, where they again began to thrive, grow and make valuable contributions. He also started a development program for the new managers who liked their jobs but lacked the skills required to perform effectively.
In time, the group began to show dramatic improvement as managers. It took almost a year of turmoil and expense to correct all the direct and indirect effects of a few well-meaning but poorly chosen promotions. “There is nothing that will hurt a career and cause more damage than moving people into a demanding role to perform work for which they lack a natural talent and in which they are not interested,” writes Joe Santana of Tech Republic, an online IT news site. “Before you consider promoting someone into a management role, you must make sure that the person has the talent, desire and willingness to fill the role.”
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Justine was the senior marketing communications director for a business-to-business medical technology company. She was one of two women in a mainly male senior management structure. She was a hard worker, would see things her boss and colleagues didn't understand, and she spent long hours juggling the marketing programs for all the company's high-tech products.
Although she devised entirely new branding for a lackluster product, which positively affected the bottom line, the head of the sales division made Justine's life at work pretty miserable. When deadlines slipped because of minimal input from the vice president of sales, he was able to turn his “relationship with the guys” into blaming Justine for the failure. Justine was also kept in the background by her attention-seeking boss. After years of giving it all and receiving very little in return, the last straw came when Justine was scapegoated and given a poor review. This was a personal humiliation to her and she began to doubt her own talent and vision.
When Justine decided to work with an outside coach, she began to evaluate her situation. She was rebuilding her self-esteem and was more able to view the true caliber of her work. Through the injustice of the judgment of her “failure,” she began to recognize that she was in the wrong place. She had an integrated view of the company, its products and its messages. She could create strategy and execute it.
It was in this “Aha!” moment that Justine recognized she no longer was willing to play the glass ceiling game. She went out on her own and developed a powerful entrepreneurial organization with other talented women, working with clients who understood and valued her skills. More importantly, she now knows it too and no one else's judgment of her can supplant her own evaluation of herself. Sometimes it's not about failure; it's about fit.
Eugene Raudsepp of The Wall Street Journal describes how winners respond to failure: “High-performing individuals view mistakes and setbacks only as temporary detours or barriers to their goals. Unlike many people who, after suffering a few bruises and defeats, get into a habit of retreat and withdrawal, they have the ability to recover rapidly from the blow of setbacks or mistakes. Rather than hide from or dismiss mistakes, they proceed to analyze what caused them. They have the ability to come to terms and learn from their mistakes.”
Joe Sugarman has said, “I failed at practically everything I tried, but I never gave up. I just knew that one of these days I'd make it if I just hung in there.” Joe has been called the “mail order maverick” by The New York Times and “one of the most successful direct marketing gurus of all time” by Success magazine.
Have you used your last failure as your next career opportunity?
CONNIE LaMOTTA is president of Workplace Strategies Associates, a business coaching consultancy in Upper Nyack, NY.
