Make a big mistake? Could be the best thing that happened to you this week!Most of us have suffered from varying degrees of perfectionism.  Some live in an almost perpetual state of anxiety and guilt about not doing as well as they "should".  Even for those with a mild degree of perfectionism, progress towards goals can be severely hampered. Many of us procrastinate starting a new project until "the time is right" (that includes my blog postings!) or we treat ourselves harshly for making mistakes we feel we “must” avoid. Albert Ellis, arguably the grandfather of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, famously referred to this phenomenon as musterbation.

But what would life look like if we were less fearful of failures? 

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So I am sitting at the Philadelphia airport on my way back from Oslo to San Diego, and I had this very unoriginal thought on the flight over here from Frankfurt.  I say unoriginal, because this has been written about and talked about for years, but it still warrants repeating.

A lot of organizations have a fairly high threshold for starting new projects, partially because a perceived failure could be career-damaging, but also because they operate almost without slack in terms of how they allocate resources.  New resources are not allocated very often, and high-level approvals may be required.  As a result, getting new initiatives off the ground can take a long, long time.  Meanwhile time, your competitors are out-innovating you.

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The retail sector has been hit hard..

It is easy enough to be an innovator when the economy is booming and everyone is willing to take on some risk.  But that time is over, at least for a while. We are working our way through the worst recession in decades. And we have lots of government "help" which will result in higher deficits, more regulations, and higher direct and indirect taxes.

Not too encouraging to think about if you are an entrepreneur trying to fund a startup.  And if you're the CEO of an established company, you're probably gritting your teeth a lot these days.  One is reminded of Donald Rumsfeld talking about the "long, hard slog" that was ahead in Iraq .

The economy will return to growth, but the recovery will take much longer than in a typical recession.  Meanwhile, the real question is how well we are adapting to this new environment that's emerging.

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