Failure was a regular part of my life both while playing college baseball and in the Navy.  Failure was accepted as a part of doing business in both communities.  Failure is embraced by the best athletes and F/A-18 aircrew because they see the value in failure as an opportunity to learn and a necessary step towards improvement.  Every hitter in baseball will go through the humbling experience of a hitting slump where it seems like you can’t even remember the last time that you got a base hit.  Rather than hide from my failures as a hitter, I learned to embrace the lessons that they taught me.  For example, if in my last three at-bats if I had hit a week groundball to the shortstop that was probably a good indicator that I had a mechanical flaw in my swing.  I needed to watch game tape to discover and correct the defect.  Failure in sports is a natural part of any game, and something that great players embrace and use as a tool to drive improvement.

The attitude of using failure as a learning opportunity served me well during my time in the Navy.  After a 1.5 hour flight, it is not uncommon to spend three hours watching video from the flight to figure out what went wrong and what lessons can be learned from the mistakes.  One moment, in particular, stands out as a seminal point when I had to learn from failure to advance my career.  I was in the midst of a demanding flight training syllabus.  Myself and the pilot I was paired up with had just failed our second flight in a row.  For both of us, this was the first time we had failed a flight in over two years, and the failures felt like a punch to the gut.  After the second flight, we closed the door to one of our squadron briefing rooms and broke down each of our flights.  We learned that we were not effectively delegating and sharing tasks between the two of us during the flights.  After taking onboard these lessons, we went on to pass our next five flights and complete the syllabus.  If I had let my ego stand in the way and not learned from my two previous failed flights, I would not have made it through the rest of the training syllabus.

Before the Microsoft, Paul Allen and Bill Gates started a company called Traf-O-Data that helped municipalities measure traffic patterns on their roads.  Traf-O-Data ultimately failed, but the lessons learned from their failure helped Allen and Gates create a transcendent company in Microsoft.  As much as we would like to deny it, failure is inevitable in sports, the military, and business.  Those who embrace and learn from failure rather than running from it will be the ones that have success.

Authored By: Fletcher Vynne, former F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapon Systems Officer

Click Here to View Fletcher’s Bio

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