I have been on leave this week staying at home catching up with various tasks. One of my DIY projects was changing our doorbell. I had in mind one with a camera which integrated into our WiFi and mobile phones so you can see who is delivering your Amazon package even if you are in France. I found such a product with good reviews and a 50 % discount. I ordered it on Amazon who excelled themselves and delivered it that evening, allowing me to charge the bell overnight in preparation for installation. Next day I commenced following the now ubiquitous online instructions. These told me to stand in front of the device, showing a picture of the bell installed in the front of a house. So, I commenced the physical installation procedure. This involved drilling 4 holes to attach a backing plate. My first effort was in some brick beside the front door which I thought might be more secure. However, the drill masonry bit snapped twice blocking up two of the holes – hitting some kind of steel frame. Plan B meant drilling in wood near the existing bell. Not ideal because space was limited, but feasible. However, having started to drill new holes above the old bell, I then removed its cover to discover it was hiding an old wired connection. So I lowered the placing of the new bell to cover this, drilling more holes. `I then had to remove the fitting plate for the old bell which was screwed to the door frame. One screw came out, but the other stubbornly refused to budge and had to be persuaded with a large hammer and screwdriver. Eventually after many trials and tribulations I stood triumphantly in front of my new bell fitted on its now secured back plate. I pressed “continue” on the web instructions - and was told to press a button inside the now assembled and installed bell! This meant removing it from its back plate - but nothing told you how to do this! Eventually I succeeded with some help from various YouTube videos – you just sort of lift and pull it off. 

The point is that as with almost any task or professional project it really helps to recognise that it will not all be plain sailing and that it is wise to plan for the unexpected. Sir Clive Woodward who coached the English rugby world cup winning team apparently had a plan B, plan C and even Plan D if the first plan A failed. As with my bell fitting thing still go wrong, but if you are expecting that (and I sort of was after years of DIY) and anticipate challenges it is far easier to manage them. In martial arts you assume someone is trying to hit you and so learn how to block and counter punch. 

As this LinkedIn article Embracing the Inevitable: The Importance of Planning for Failure in Leadership comments “Planning for failure is not about being pessimistic; it's about being realistic and proactive. By expecting the unexpected and having a plan in place, leaders can navigate through challenges more effectively and emerge stronger on the other side.” It recommends coping strategies including:

• Foster a Culture of Open Communication
• Develop Resilience
• Implement Flexible Plans.
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See also this Forbes article How To Fail So You Can Succeed Later which proposes that embracing failure teaches you how to win – “it’s something we try to avoid at all costs—despite its innate value to our journey toward achievement and fulfillment.” Interestingly it observes this can be a generational issue “Generation Z in particular is afraid to fail….They’re so scared of making a mistake, of looking foolish or misguided or just plain lame, that they choose to do nothing. They don’t see that their inaction is a failure in itself.” It identifies the values of failure including:

• Gets our attention
• Makes us relatable
• Keeps us humble

And recommends ways to overcome the fear of failure including the most obvious – “Try again. Armed with the insights of your analysis, make a plan to rectify your mistakes and get back out there.”

I also like this older but still very valid and relevant Harvard Business Review article Strategies for Learning from Failure which observes “In organizational life ….. some failures are inevitable and some are even good. And successful learning from failure is not simple: It requires context-specific strategies. But first leaders must understand how the blame game gets in the way and work to create an organizational culture in which employees feel safe admitting or reporting on failure.” Essential to this is “Building a Learning Culture” “Only leaders can create and reinforce a culture that counteracts the blame game and makes people feel both comfortable with and responsible for surfacing and learning from failures.” This will facilitate the detection and analysis and ultimately correction and avoidance of failure. There should be “a new paradigm—one that recognizes the inevitability of failure in today’s complex work organizations. Those that catch, correct, and learn from failure before others do will succeed. Those that wallow in the blame game will not.”

The lessons of successful people in history support this persistence in the face of initial failure:

• Thomas Edison allegedly took 10,000 attempts to perfect the light bulb
• At least four record companies turned down the Beatles before they were signed by EMI’s Parlophone label
• 12 publishers rejected J.K. Rowling’s first draft of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – one reason being it was too complex!
• Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper job for lack of creativity
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team

Indeed it seems like to succeed we need to fail first – see this article  Failure Found to Be an “Essential Prerequisite” for Success which cites research by Dashun Wang and colleagues at Northwestern University in which amongst other things they “analyzed 46 years’ worth of venture capital startup investments.” “It turns out that trying again and again only works if you learn from your previous failures. The idea is to work smart, not hard.” “You have to figure out what worked and what didn’t, and then focus on what needs to be improved instead of thrashing around and changing everything,” says Wang. “The people who failed didn’t necessarily work less [than those who succeeded]. They could actually have worked more; it’s just that they made more unnecessary changes.”

Our new bell operates really well by the way and we can now distinguish between Amazon deliveries (some ring the bell while others bang on door and leave the parcel on the porch), the postman and unwelcome street vendors. It even works as an alert on my Apple Watch. It was worth the learning effort.

I like these inciteful quotes on the topic of learning from failure.

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” — Bruce Lee.

"Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly." ― John F. Kennedy.

"It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience." ― the Kenyan and American actress Lupita Nyong'o.

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” – the author and illustrator Stephen McCraine.
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"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail." ― Confucius.

I have now been watching the sporting excellence on display at the Olympics for some two weeks. With no apologies for returning to this for a theme – it is the greatest event on the planet at the moment and only comes around once every 4 years – I was particularly struck by a quote referred to by one of the commentators in the cycling velodrome I think from the legendary tennis player Billie Jean King. When players walk out into Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open, they are greeted by her iconic quote: "Pressure is a privilege." She actually went on to say “and champions adjust” see this US Open 2024 news article on the origins of the quote.

This is I suggest an apt analogy for our professional lives and its associated challenges where we constantly encounter pressured situations. But it is not the fact this occurs, because it will, but how like sports people we prepare and react. See this Harvard Business Review article How to Deal with High Pressure Situations at Work which comments “From studying for exams, to preparing for job interviews, to giving a big speech or presentation, it’s hard to conceive of any career-defining moments that aren’t peppered with pressure.”  It then makes recommendations about how to improve your ability to deal with pressure, or at least avoid choking under pressure in critical career moments including:

• Know your threshold - the first step to managing high-pressure situations is understanding your stress tolerance level. Practical tips for building self-awareness include getting feedback from trusted colleagues and friends, evaluating your performance under different degrees of pressure
• Identify your pressure triggers - there will be particular situations that evoke more negative reactions than others — and these are very personal and individual

For sports men and women it is in some ways arguably easier because their life is about training and competing (i.e. performing under pressure) all the time though the better they are the greater the challenge. However, I suggest we don’t always as professionals consciously prepare for and mitigate the potential stress of high pressure moments in our working lives to the same extent we could do.  The fear of public speaking (which the Harvard article above says is “one of the top phobias in the modern world”) is a good example.

We all get nervous (I am no exception) but we can turn the situation to our advantage. I was privileged to give a talk on latest developments in outsourcing at the ITechLaw European Technology conference in Stockholm back in pre Covid days in 2017. I was particularly worried about making the topic meaningful and interesting with all the other technology developments like blockchain going on at the time - and a great line up of other speakers from around the world.  Then I remembered Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel prize for literature in Stockholm in 2016 (he did not turn up to collect it until sometime later!). So I started my presentation by standing silently at the speaker’s lectern with Bob Dylan’s song “The Times They Are A-Changing” playing for a couple of minutes. It grabbed the audience’s attention right away before I said a word and the rest of the talk was much easier as a result.

This article Understanding work pressure (definition, types and remedies) focuses on how to recognise and manage pressure at work. It interestingly distinguishes pressure from work stress, which effectively is where you exceed your ability to cope, with work pressure. It identifies pressure as “internal” or “external” and gives some examples like:

• having to deliver work to deadlines
• inconsistent demands (like incongruous performance expectations)
• having a manager who demands extraordinary performance

It then suggests coping methods including:

• Prioritise activities and expectations
• Set boundaries
• Take time to recharge

But this is not just about merely coping but how to thrive under pressure and put in the best performances when it matters, as it clearly does at the Olympics or the US Open tennis tournament. And ultimately however physically or mentally prepared we are, it is as the old saying goes “all in the mind.” See this transcript of an Economist video from the University of Derby What Makes Elite Athletes Thrive Or Dive Under Pressure? | The Economist Video Transcript(with a link to the video) which focuses on the Oxford v Cambridge Women’s Boat Race: “When they walk outside that boathouse there will be 100,000 people standing on the bank. That is something you just can't get your head around until you actually lived it.” With the help of a sports psychologist the successful Cambridge crew “work on managing their thinking, knowing that they are in control of their psychological state” employing “specific techniques to help the team at the most mentally testing moments in the race. When the pain kicks in they have trigger words that they've planned for in advance that they will say to themselves, to get across the finish line.”

How these rowers cope with that intense pressure can make the difference between glory and failure. I think in work as in sport it comes down to attitude and approach - and also seizing the day – opportunities to excel don’t come round all the time. 

As professionals, as athletes and indeed as people we are all privileged to participate to the full.

Kobe Bryant the American basketball player commented “Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.”

While another legend in the same sport Michel Jordan advises “The only way to relieve that pressure is to build your fundamentals, practice them over and over, so when game breaks down, you can handle anything that transpires.” 

And the football manager Jurgen Klopp shrewdly observes “The challenge is to stay cool enough to handle the pressure in the moment so you can succeed in the future”.

At the end of the day it’s all about attitude as Winston Churchill says "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
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Ernest Hemingway provides an elegant concluding quote on this topic: “Courage is grace under pressure.”