Fail Better

Nearly every business book claims to contain the secrets of success. They may be wrapped up in cartoon concepts like “dancing elephants” or “purple cows,” or summarized in a smattering of snappy slogans such as “stick to your knitting” or “big hairy audacious goals.” But, irrespective of the root metaphor or indeed the TLA (three-letter acronym), the success sellers purport to transport the reader to a magical world where customers are in raptures and profits are illimitable.

Yet the real secret of success is something that your average how-to book doesn’t dare mention. Whisper the word: failure. Yes, failure. In fact, most success stories in business have a back story of botches, blunders, cock-ups, and catastrophes. Far from ignoring them, we should be dragging them out into the limelight. For it is the ability to learn from failure, to refuse to be beaten, to fail, fail, and fail again that separates the high-fliers from the no-hopers.

Fail Better! celebrates flops, fumbles, and fiascos of every flavour and salutes those who triumphed when they should have tanked. Through the chequered histories of 25 self-made contrarians from Madonna to Rupert Murdoch, it shows that playing things by the MBA marketing manual is no match for stubbornness, single-mindedness, and sheer serendipity.

If you fail to read Fail Better!, you are sure to fail miserably. If you choose to read it, you will at least fail with a smile on your face. Or, who knows, you might just learn a thing or two from this motley crew of mavericks who scorned the well-trodden paths to fame and fortune yet scored spectacular successes all the same.

Designed to be dipped into or read cover-to-cover, Fail Better! shows that there are six sure-fire ways of failing successfully.  Which way to the egress?

The elephant cartoons, incidentally, are the work of James Nunn, who’s best known for his sketch of a panda of the cover of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.