Our society reveres individual greatness. We root for the Kobe Bryants and Peyton Mannings of the world, we are mesmerized by the likes of Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg, we follow every move made by Warren Buffet and Elon Musk. Individuals have a special place in our world, and we attribute much of society’s success to unique people—Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr.—instead of the teams and movements behind them. It goes without saying that there is often an army of people that drive an individual to success. But individuals, acting alone, can do extraordinary things.
Two Years of Failure – by Jeff Stibel
A little over two years ago, my assistant and I snuck into the office after hours and painted quotes of famous people’s thoughts about failure, from Winston Churchill (“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”) to Sofia Loren (“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life”). After my assistant left, I took a Sharpie marker and wrote some of my most humbling failures on the wall.
The wall was met with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, both by employees and by the press who quickly caught wind of it. Over time, employees, partners, even family members came by to add their remarks until the wall was littered with failures. It was received favorably by…
Read the full article where it originally appeared on LinkedIn.