Human nature is to shy away from failure.

But like most things we tend to act in extremes.

The popular, often ill-applied, business jargon to “fail fast,” is a prime example of these drastic swings.

Although this comes from a good mindset that failure is often correlated with learning, therefore, failing fast implies that you’re learning quickly.

However, there are different kinds of failure:

The right type of failure, which is consciously taking on an experiment and inventing where you don’t know if it’s going to work.

(This is an important distinction because if you know it’s going to work ahead of time it’s not an experiment.)

The wrong type of failure is if you have an operating history and are doing something repeated and suddenly have a failure.

That’s not an experiment, that is poor execution.

Is failure over-hyped? In this case, I think the wrong type of failure is.

Hopefully distinguishing between the two types of failure has empowered you with discernment that will lead to more strategic and profitable action.