CEO wants his company to make more mistakes

If you don’t think you have high blood pressure, this story may change your mind. Or cause your blood pressure to rise.

New guidelines from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology define high blood pressure as 130/80 or greater. Under this standard, the number of adults with hypertension will rise to 103 million from 72 million under the previous standard.

Stress causes blood pressure to rise. And fear of failure causes stress. Therefore, learning to manage our fear of failure is a healthy idea.

Failing to succeed

This topic is on my mind today after reading a surprising Harvard Business Review article. The writer quotes James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola Co., who says: “If we’re not making mistakes, we’re not trying hard enough.”

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, told a technology conference that his company has too many hit shows. “We have to take more risk . . . to try more crazy things . . . we should have a higher cancel rate overall.”

Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur in the world, adds: “If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going to be experiments. And if they’re experiments, you don’t know ahead of time if they’re going to work.”

Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, recently described his business philosophy: “There’s nobody that I’ve ever met that bats over .500 or 50-50 on making the right decisions. There’s nobody that can see around corners. Nobody can. But the guys that succeed are the ones that cut their bad decisions off quicker than others and let their good ones run longer than others.”

What do the following Forbes quotes have in common?

• Denis Waitley: “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat.”
• Henry Ford: “The only mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
• C. S. Lewis: “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
• Robert T. Kiyosaki: “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are….