TJL #7: According to Jeff Bezos there are two types of failure
What Jeff Bezos teaches us about failure
Hi friends,
Welcome back to Today Jan Learned (TJL) #7. In this newsletter I share a new lesson every day, so stay tuned for today’s lesson which is about failure.
After reading this you will understand that there are two types of failure: good ones (experimental failures) and bad ones (operational failures). Use this knowledge to make better mistakes in life.
Two kinds of failure
Today’s lesson is from Invent & Wander, Jeff Bezos’ new book. In it he says:
I always point out that there are two different kinds of failure. There’s experimental failure—that’s the kind of failure you should be happy with. And there’s operational failure.
Bezos distinguishes between two kinds of failures: experimental failure and operational failure.
Operational failure
This is what Bezos has to say about operational failure:
We’ve built hundreds of fulfilment centres at Amazon over the years, and we know how to do that. If we build a new fulfilment centres and it’s a disaster, that’s just bad execution. That’s not a good failure.
Operational failure is the kind failure where you did something wrong that you know how to do right and have done right before millions of times. Operational failure is a bad kind of failure.
Experimental failure
This is what Bezos has to say about experimental failure:
But when we are developing a new product or service or experimenting in some way and it doesn’t work, that’s great. That’s great failure. And you need to distinguish between the two types of failure and really be seeking invention and innovation.
Experimental failure is the kind of failure where you don’t know what is going to happen, but you can learn from it. It’s a good kind of failure. It’s doing something new and innovative which you don’t know is going to pan out before starting.
Recap
Today we discussed the difference between operational failure and experimental failure. Think about your past failures, which ones were operational and which ones were experimental. How could you have prevented the operational ones and how could you have learned more from the experimental ones?
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Thank you so much for reading. See you next time!