Nothing to Lose

We’re all born with a sense of wonderment. As children, our curiosity and our never-ending drive to learn have led us to achieve many milestones in our lives: from our first steps, to learning to read and write, to finishing up high school and beyond.

In the early days, we were taught that if we stumbled, we should get back up and try again (like the little train that could, or the tortoise from that famous fable). We had no fear of trying new things (or failing). We expected no reward for our success, aside from the sheer joy of accomplishment. We had no expectations. We were free to explore successes and failures alike without judgment or ridicule.

However, somewhere between then and now, we became trapped. We started worrying about what others thought about us. We started measuring our success. We started to be set in our ways. We started to be complacent. We started to be lazy.

True, we had come a long way from where we’ve been, and we had accomplished quite a bit. We had risen to a certain level in life, but it also made us wary of looking down, because the fall would be too great. We felt we earned ourselves a break, having worked so hard before. We became enamored by our successes and crippled by our failures. And somewhere between then and now, success and perfection became ideals that we could not live without, and failure became a curse word deemed unacceptable.

What causes this? Dr. Carol Dweck calls it the “CEO disease” – I call it pride (incidentally, one of the seven deadly sins). CEOs (surrounded by “yes” men) face this dilemma all the time. Should they continue doing what they’ve been accustomed to doing, or should they change course at the risk of looking stupid?

Lots of famous people get the CEO disease. Lee Iacocca had it. After his initial success as head of Chrysler Motors, he kept bringing out the same car models over and over again with superficial changes. This worked well for a while, until eventually these became the models that nobody wanted.

Tennis star John McEnroe also is a classic case. He would make excuses about why he lost matches, rather than doubling his efforts to succeed the next time around. This cost him his career.

Even ordinary people get this disease. They become complacent in their lives. They take people for granted. They become too self-centered.

Pride makes you feel like you have something to lose, and making excuses provides a mental cushion for mistakes. It’s often easier to say you “could have” or “should have” done something without actually doing it, than to put all of your heart and soul into something just to see it fail.

Leaders who are successful are usually humble enough to admit their mistakes and to change course when they’re wrong. For example, Steve Jobs was publicly fired from a company that he himself built, but rather than mope on his “fall from grace,” he started two companies (Pixar and Next) and later returned to Apple to turnaround the company he started. He realized that (even he) had nothing to lose – that every day could be his last. Similarly, Michael Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers only to end up creating one of the largest financial media conglomerates, and to become the mayor of New York.

In his commencement speech to Stanford graduates in 2005, Steve Jobs’s advice came from the last issue of “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which featured a photograph of an early morning country road with the caption saying, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Perhaps if we all took this advice, and were a little more foolish (and a little more humble), we’d be better off… because we all have nothing to lose (and everything to gain).