Be a student of failure

Over the weekend, I purchased How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner.

Flyvbjerg and Garnder’s choice to begin the book with a story not of epic success, but one filled with countless setbacks hooked me.

The story in question: The California Highspeed Rail project. Despite its ambitious vision to create an efficient, eco-friendly transportation network connecting major California cities, the project has been plagued by political roadblocks and a tripling of its initial budget, casting serious doubts on its future viability.

Why this project — and so many others like it — fail to thrive has largely been the focus of Flyvbjerg’s career as a Professor of Planning.

While the lessons from this book are for another day, what the first several pages did remind me of is that:

We shouldn’t look only to our successes for wisdom, but also our failures.

We should be just as interested in why we could not pull something off as we are in why we were able to pull something off.

Both are compelling teachers.