Continuing my New Year’s resolutions, today I’m going to talk about my goal to try something a bit daring, a bit challenging and even a bit out of my comfort zone. The objective isn’t to fail, but rather to not let the fear of failure stop me from trying. It’s a bit like my post yesterday on Best Case Scenario. In that case I’ve resolved to focus on the potential positive outcome from a situation. With the Epic Fail I’m encouraging myself not to worry about the Best or Worst Case Scenario, but to just give it a go.

I think a lot of people try things, but not until they’ve removed so much from the project that the difference between success and failure is slight. Yes, they’ve done all they can to minimize total failure, but in the process they’ve eliminated the potential for knock out success. 

The result is a middle of the pack result. Now it used to be you could get away with that in business. Just make minor adjustments year after year. Maybe offer your product in a new color, flavor or size. But the competition is too stiff and consumers are too savvy and demanding. Incremental progress is a road to slow (but now accelerating) failure.

We all need to be ok with failure because that’s how we learn. That’s where paradigm shifting progress comes from. Again, the point isn’t to aim for comprehensive failure, it’s to allow for that possibility because sometimes the difference between that failure and a huge win is very small and only evident late in the game.

So, my second resolution for 2010 is to commit to trying something that may not be a sure thing, and not comprimising the idea to make it ‘safer.’