When I was a young manager, and was interviewing people for a management position reporting to me, I discussed a good candidate with my mentor. I liked this one particular candidate, but he had been fired from his last job. I told my mentor that the guy being fired worried me. He thought a moment and replied “Never trust a man that has never been fired”. This bit of advice has stayed with me for almost three decades, and it was some of the best advice I ever received. (For all of you who have never been fired, please do not go into uproar, and note that the quote is “never trust”, not “cannot trust”.) I think about this advice often, and it has given me a lot of insight into people.
At the base level, what this means is that people deserve a second chance, and that failing once doesn’t mean that people will continuously fail. I am always willing to give people second chances, and often many more than that. I have come to realize that, for the most part, people that have issues almost never overcome them. Almost never. But nevertheless I give them opportunity to overcome their issues – drugs, alcohol, poor performance, bad interpersonal skills, whatever. I often do this in opposition to the advice of my managers and business partner. I personally assume the risk for these decisions. When these decisions go astray, I personally pay a financial and emotional penalty. However, what I have found is that on those rare occasions when people overcome their issues, and when they seize the opportunity given them, I benefit far more than any cost associated with the failures. The fact is I become a better person for having given someone the opportunity to overcome previous failures. It is a tremendous feeling.
At deeper levels, the above statement means that you do not know how someone will react to adversity if they have never had to overcome adversity. Someone who has never failed must not be trusted because it is impossible to tell how they will respond when crisis hits. It is critical to know this about a person if you are going to place trust in them. Some people curl up into a ball when they have failed, or seek refuge in the bottom of a bottle, while others pick themselves up and strive to overcome. I can only give my trust to those people I know will redouble their efforts in time of crisis.
Failure also teaches people about themselves – if they are willing to learn. It teaches them what they do well, and what they do not so well. If they are smart, they concentrate on the good and avoid the bad. It is really quite simple.
Failure can also be a result of factors beyond a person’s control. There is a lot of that going around – manufacturing plants closing, jobs being shed, and political infighting resulting in purges of personnel. A person that gets caught in such a position deserves special consideration, but that person also needs to show the willingness and fortitude to overcome adversity.
Perhaps the most despicable of all are those that fail, are those that do not care that they fail, and actually make a career out of ongoing failure. They have no integrity and no soul. Almost every politician you see is of this ilk. They fail – and they know they fail – at almost anything they do or have ever done. Yet they are so dishonest and lacking in integrity, they opt to retain the trappings of success and power. They do worse than nothing – they actually do ill. It is disgusting.
I have been fired twice in my life. I was a young engineer. I was a terrible engineer. I simply could not finish a project. I would complete it 90%, and then move on to the next project, as I simply did not have the personality to see it all of the way through. I became bored and was always looking for something else to do when I rather was meant to be completing the project in hand. The company rightfully terminated my services. But I learned something very valuable – I was not meant to be an engineer, and was not meant to undertake projects personally. I transitioned into manufacturing management. This I quickly learned suited my skillset and personality, and I began being successful. I also learned that I was a good engineering manager – ie. I could oversee large projects very capably so long as I didn’t have to implement the detail of the project personally.
The second time I was fired was for political reasons. I lost my mentor in a purge at the top of the company – he was a senior VP, and when the president retired, a new president came in and brought his people with him. My boss was let go in the subsequent purge. I attempted to tread the water and become a political animal. I was not good at it, and the new VPs brought in their new darlings, and eventually I was pushed out. And again I learned something valuable about myself – I am not a political animal, and I am not able to change those stripes. I abandoned all semblance of caring about internal manoeuvrings in the companies I worked for, and concentrated solely on doing my job. I became a turnaround manager – and went where plants and companies were in trouble. I was/am extremely good at it. I demanded total autonomy – and got it. I did not care whose toes I stepped on, or what political problems I caused. I focused on the job and only the job. I became much sought after. Companies that hired me knew I would perform, plus they knew I was not out to take anyone’s job at the top. I was actually there to save the people at the top. I would turn a company around and move on. Ultimately I bought into my own business.
The moral of the story is that until people fail, you do not know how they will respond, and it is critical to have this information about people you need to trust. Even though most people do not respond positively to failure, there are those that do. Failure offers the opportunity to reach new heights and concentrate on areas of excellence, if the person is prepared to learn from failure.
Most crucially, for me, having thought about this for many years, I have come to understand just how despicable and disgusting it is that our political leaders cultivate personal success from abject professional failure. They pay no personal price for their failure, and what they learn is that they need not be men of honor and integrity in order to maintain their positions, but rather they learn they can retain all of their trappings of wealth and success by telling ever larger and viler lies. They have learned that their citizens are as morally bankrupt as they themselves, and that they can influence these same voters with welfare, tax cuts, food stamps, and political favor. This flies in the face of all that is good and right, and until these events can be reversed, and until men of honor that learn positive lessons from failure are installed as leaders, and those that are morally bankrupt are displaced, the country will continue a rapid slide toward catastrophe.
llpoh, good writing …
A minor quibble, I would not equate ‘firing’ with ‘failure’. Necessarily.
My first fulltime job was AT&T and I left under my own steam for better things. With some tech credentials, I started my first job at a TV station, admitting I had no practical experience. But I also knew they’d lost four senior engineers and a supervisor to the outfit that was building an independent UHF station nearby.
Starting on a ‘three months’ trial’ and about at the end of that, called in to the chief engineer’s office, and told, “Oh we’ve found an experienced man so … ” so I guess I was fired. But when he told me, “You should go back to AT&^T” it enlivened me. Heh.
Just over a year later, I was helping to building the original Ch. 19 in Cincinnati. The chief engineer there was a ejmntor and I learned a lot from him. Alas, he was ‘fired’ for corporate reasons. Nonetheless, the head office wanted him to oversee the next station. He told them to shove it where the sun don’t shine.
By then, most of us had made plans to bail out. I went to Saudi Arabia as a contractor. From the fire into the frypan. U.S. company subsidiary, first close-up-and-personal experience in S.A. One of my friends and myself were the first to complete a year’s contract. The U.S. head office had fired the project manager, chief engineer, and about 14 other warm bodies were in and our through that time.
In the interim, I was acting chief engineer, funny, that. The new permanent one we’d met and he became another mentor. In due course, for more politics, he was fired. Not without resorting to the Saudi law system and got a handsome payout. Told the staff, keep your nose cloean, finish off your contrracts and fugem. It was not to be.
More corporate games and it was my turn. Only, I had developed connections with Saudi staff, and sued my employer in Saudi hearings. My Saudi videotape editor I’d trained came as my translator. We arrived in the magistrate’s office early — the company came late. Hah.
I had the option to rejejct the magistrate’s decision, in which case, I would stay on full pay until the appeal. Which might take a year or more … but I would have to stay in company housing with my family. No, sir. I accept your ruling. It was a handsome enough settlement that I spent some weeks in Lebanon and then in Athens, writing a book. So I guess I wasn’t fired. Funny thing is, I’d always had the attitude that doing the right thing by the job and the contract was more important than playing corporate games for suits from the U.S. who had no clue.
The one thing I knew was, doing a job to the best of my ability. And it paid off. Back to the U.S. for a time, and my rep got me a job offier for another contract, in American Samoa.
From there, well, is how I ended up in Australia in 1974.
Conversion to colo(u)r transmission, you see,experience, and hard to come by in the land of oz. I even had permanent residency offiered on arrival. Not that I planned to stay, but so it goes.
The trasitional position went well, until all the installion, debugging, ahd corrections were made, then it was “We’ve reorganized the partment and your job no longer exists.” Ho hum. Onward and upward. And I had the offer not to be refused, chief engineer at a commercial production house in Melbourne. Did such a good job of upgrading facilities that the competition bought the company out. Seventy of us on the street.
And that wasn’t the end of my working career. More fun followed.
llpoh – Any chance you’d open a shop in FL? Or Australia, actually. I spent some time there in ’06 and would pack my shit and go live there in half a heartbeat with ZERO regrets. I’d be tickled shitless to be the guy in the neon green shirt spraying birdshit off the park benches every morning… He always looked really content.
Novista – great stories. Ecliptix – sorry, not going to FLA anytime soon. But you have the right idea re Australia. If you can get a visa, go for it. I think there is plenty of work. Especially in the mines.