ON DEFINING FAILURE
In sports, success is often measured by postseason achievement. While the marathon of the regular season is in many ways a more accurate reflection of a team’s identity, winning the sprint to a postseason title, for most people, is really what it’s all about. Legacies are defined by championships, and it's easy to see anything less as a failure.
The NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks are a great example. This season they compiled the league’s best record, and they secured the #1 overall seed and home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. After months of hard work to put themselves in that position, the top-seeded Bucks were promptly upset in the opening round of the playoffs. It was an unexpected, unwelcome, and unmistakable blemish on what was otherwise an outstanding year.
In the aftermath of that upset loss, Bucks superstar, former league MVP and NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo - the unquestioned leader of the team and face of the franchise - was posed an honest and insightful question: despite the regular season success, he was asked, do you view this season as a failure? It’s a hard question to answer in a losing moment. It’s a great question, though, because it speaks to so many other questions - each of which are important for those of us competing to win in any important area of life. Is the outcome all that matters? What part does failure play in the pursuit of success? And what value - if any - is there when we don't get the results we're after?
Those are questions each one of us have to answer every time we come up short. Especially when you’ve spent a lot of time preparing for that outcome (like Giannis and the Bucks did), and especially when you’re expected to succeed (like Giannis and the Bucks were), the true nature of your perspective on failure is revealed. I’d encourage you to take two minutes today and listen to this NBA superstar’s thoughtful and measured response to coming up short, and use it today to re-evaluate (and maybe re-calibrate) your own perspective on defining failure in your pursuit.
“It’s not a failure,” Giannis says frustratingly. “It’s steps to success…There’s always steps to it… There is no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days. Some days you’re able to be successful, some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. That’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. This year somebody else is gonna win. Simple as that. We’re gonna come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better…and hopefully we can win a championship.”
Giannis’s response reflects the perspective of what I would call a process-oriented performer. Process-oriented performers are characterized by their ability to zoom out and see the big picture. Instead of viewing outcomes as stand-alone events, they are tied together into a larger narrative - a long-term process these performers have committed themselves to. These are the “steps” Giannis mentions, steps that, though sometimes painful, help people with this mindset continue to learn and improve. Process-oriented people are committed to using whatever happens today - good, bad, or ugly - to make themselves more worthy of winning tomorrow.
Those at the other end of the spectrum I'd call outcome-focused performers. Outcome-focused performers have a tendency to zoom in, and in doing so - without the ability to see how one event might be tied to another - are more apt to view individual outcomes as stand-alone events, and thus label the event itself and their part in it in terms of success or failure. For that reason, outcome-focused performers are more likely to be defined by their results...for better or for worse.
Each one of us land somewhere on this performance spectrum. We could be extremely process-oriented or we could be extremely outcome-focused. I’d say it’s more likely, for most of us, that we find ourselves somewhere in the middle, pulled in both directions at times, especially in our moments of failure. We wrestle with those same questions. Is the outcome all that matters? What part does failure play in the pursuit of success? And what value - if any - is there when I don't get the results I'm after?
Beyond stopping to evaluate your current perspective, I think it’s also worth considering today what changes becoming your best might require you to make. When you really stop and think about it, is your very best calling you to zoom in and put more emphasis and more judgment on today’s outcome? Are you best served placing more of your identity in the results?
I'd argue that your very best is calling you instead to do just the opposite. To do what champions do - what Giannis Antetokounmpo has chosen to do - and work to become a little more process-oriented. That doesn't mean you don't care about the outcome. Of course the outcome matters. But it does mean choosing to zoom out and re-calibrate your perspective on failure. It means embracing the steps (even the painful ones) that success often requires us to take, and using whatever happens today - good, bad, or ugly - to make yourself more worthy of winning tomorrow.