The Problem with Success

There are a lot of good things that can be said about success. For one thing, it’s probably what you owe your college education to; not everyone can afford to go to the Ateneo, nor does everyone pass the entrance exams, for that matter. And so a certain amount of that success has accompanied your stay here, and much of it is expected as a result of your having completed your studies here. You have been primed for it, both at home and in this sprawling campus, and you leave from here branded accordingly: ATENEAN!!! It will say so, in neon lights on your application forms… “Expect great things from this person!” And we do. We expect Ateneo graduates to perform above-par; their reputation precedes their actual performance. We expect it during on-the-job training, and even at the job interview.

Do they always fulfill those expectations? Will you?

Now that you’ve all passed…Are you ready to fail?

The problem with success is that it is too often associated with its outward symbols, and this tends to mislead us. Money, size, influence, being #1, and on a personal level things like mobility and travel, a high corporate position, title, power, glamor, financial security… and these are not bad things to have, mind you. On the contrary, they make for a pretty cushy life.

Unfortunately, these tend to be what define success in today’s image-driven society, and these also tend to be what we chase, believing that these outward symbols constitute success. We become then, engaged in a contest to win: against the competition, versus the opponent, we must make #1 position. Why, we talk about leadership as if it were a finite resource that we must hoard “while supplies last!” (What, there’s not enough leadership for everyone?) As the popular game show says, “Abante ako! Atras si Mokong.” We are taught that we need to be ahead of the rest; we must have more of everything, if we are to succeed. And in this kind of race, there is no room for failure. In fact, it is to be avoided at all cost. To fail is to lose. We are afraid to hear the buzzer (bzzzt!) that says “loser!”

Hey guys --- that kind of thinking is really old paradigm.

In 1977, long before any of you were born, one Michael Korda wrote a book called Success. It sold a lot of copies. In it, Korda tried to define the look of success, ways of dressing that characterized successful people. One of the illustrations was captioned “The Loser’s Jacket Pocket”, and it featured a close-up of a man’s coat with three pens and an eyeglass case stuffed into the pocket. The nerd look, in other words. Well, guess what? Microsoft in those days was crawling with characters like that! I suspect it still is, but they’re definitely not losers today.

Believe me, you don’t want a life without failure. It’s absolutely boring. Who wants to watch a basketball game where all the players are so good, they shoot the ball into the basket every single time? What kind of a game is that? Why, you want the blues and the greens, of course. The fun, the thrill, the rush, the flavor --- all this may be even more in the failing than it is in the victory. In fact, it might be fair to say that what drives us is failure. If you’re not failing, you’re not learning.

Yes. Think about it, failure and success are so closely related, that it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. Most true successes are the result of failure, and vice versa. It’s a beautiful paradox. And never has it been more true than today, because today, in what is called the New Economy, there is no way to predict the future, (although funnily enough, people still keep trying to do that.)

Life is just too complex!

We are so inundated with information, that anything is possible. In this scenario of discontinuous change, we are called upon to abandon the predictability of rationality and logic and rules because they don’t really lead us forward. They lock us in the past; they fetter our imaginations. There are too many problems in the world today --- too deep, too big, too widespread --- to be solved in the old predictable ways.

The solutions require creativity and fresh thinking, and the truth is that you can’t possibly come up with a new idea unless you’re willing to take a risk.

What’s the risk? Failing.

I was creative director at McCann-Erickson for many years before I became its president. With each new batch of creative hires, I would go out of my way to prepare them for the idea of failure. (Many of them were from Ateneo, yes.) You see, for creative teams in ad agencies, failure is part of the game.

For every 10 or 15 wonderful ideas we have, one may be picked up, and even then, it may be pounded to a pulp before it gets approved for production. For a young creative writer, it may take months before he or she gets any work approved.

That’s a dry, dry desert for those who thrive on creative energy. So we have to teach them how to build up resilience, and courage, and faith. We point out that they have an inexhaustible source of creativity. We employ humor to get them through the times when it seems like none of our new ideas finds resonance or affirmation.

Humor is enshrined in the company’s list of corporate values. Humor isn’t just our way of coping; it is a doorway to the imagination, it opens us to new possibilities simply by underscoring a goofy way of looking at a situation. Humor restores our spirit and helps us live to fight another day.

It can get tough, but if you quit, you drop out of the game. All creativity takes risks because original ideas make us uncomfortable! They look and feel strange; they’re untried and untested. Yet sadly, many marketers still rely on research to help them rationalize the cost and risk of innovation, which is almost impossible to do. When it comes to truly new concepts, gut feel may be the better guide, and that’s an act of tremendous courage. It’s human nature to fall back on the familiar, hence much too often, the creative process gets thwarted by remnants of the Old Order.

Many books cite as a catastrophic marketing mistake the launching of new Coke in the 80’s, when after blind tests confirmed that consumers preferred a slightly different taste, the head of Coca-Cola gave the go signal. The verdict was devastating. Angry consumers rejected any deviation from classic Coke. Roberto Goizueta never heard the end of it (it is said that for months he received nasty notes), but he was visionary enough to learn from the mistake: it was the brand, not the formula. And he was able to use the situation to strengthen the brand values at a time when they were in danger of being taken for granted by the market.

In the Old Order, successful companies were more concerned about defending their turf and preserving their success, to the point where they just kept projecting what they thought they knew.

Ever hear of Decca Records? In the 60’s, they were big in the music industry, and had been able to read trends well enough, so back then they predicted that guitar music was on the way out --- and they turned down the Beatles.

You’ve heard the story of Post-It Notes, and how it was the result of a botched batch of glue. What’s significant is not that some scientist made a mistake. What is worth noting in that story is that Spencer Silver let everyone know about it. That’s what allowed another scientist, Art Fry, to innovate using the bad batch of glue. Back in the 70’s, it took 16 years for that whole cycle to happen. Today it may take much less time. I admire the 3M Company for building a culture that allows people to make mistakes and to own up to them.

As I said, success and failure are intricately connected, rather than at opposite ends of the spectrum, but we may fall into the trap of thinking they are, because from childhood we are (unwittingly) programmed to avoid failure. It’s useful as a discipline in school, I suppose, but beyond that, we need to recognize, contain, and transcend our fear of failing. We can never really be rid of it, I suppose. We all fear loss, rejection, anonymity --- these are forms of failure. We fear the unknown. (That’s a built-in sensitivity that’s meant to heighten our awareness when we are in unfamiliar territory, in case we meet up with unexpected danger.)

But success too, can breed fear and paralyze us into inaction and false comfort. Graham Greene called success “delayed failure.” That’s the same as a great idea whose time hasn’t yet come, isn’t it? Fear of making mistakes gets in the way of learning. It is even said that if you’re not failing, you’re not learning!

I am a certified failure myself were I to be measured against traditionally accepted Old Order standards. I did not complete my college degree. I fell in love and married quite young. I did not plan out my future, I had no set goals to achieve. But I did love what I was doing, and I was clear about what things were important to me in my life: Money never was. Titles? No. Family? Yes. Husband and children? Yes. Love --- yes. Community --- yes; art? Yes! Relationships, responsibility, community, country? Yes. Truth, change, integrity --- yes.

That I was given a chance to put those ideas into practice has been an incredible stroke of good luck, because from my string of failures, one couldn’t have predicted that. I’ve been “asked off” accounts, been rejected countless times by irate clients, been awful situations and embarrassed to death, and survived.

I was blessed with a great team at McCann. Together, we were brave enough to do the right thing each time we were faced with an unpopular decision. I learned many things on the job. Cognizant of the rare privilege to lead, I tried to do it with common sense and consistency and by giving credit to people. I tried not to ask anyone to do what I wasn’t willing to do myself. I made many mistakes, and I continue to make them, but I do not disguise them. I wear them like a badge of honor, and I share the stories. Eventually, I came to see that even the defeats were important steps that were necessary --- because they brought us to something better.

Perhaps at any other time, and in another environment, those traits would have been suicidal. As I said, I was lucky.

Still, I would be lying if I said that failures rolled off my back like water off a duck. We do suffer some loss of pride and dignity when we fail, but we can dig into our reserve of courage, and we can bounce back. Advertising and marketing people work in a highly competitive industry, and we are often pictured as gladiators who eat stress for breakfast. The truth is, stress does not taste good, and it invariably gives us indigestion, but even if we are not gluttons for pain, our kind of business is unrelenting. Fear comes to visit me regularly, and it has become familiar enough that I can look it in the eye, (although given a choice, I would rather not.)

You know, on the occasions when I’ve joined international gatherings of the company, I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon about us Filipinos --- we rarely volunteer a point of view or a commentary unless specifically asked, yet when we do speak up, everyone is surprised at how articulate and knowledgeable we are!
When members of a group are asked who is willing to lead, we Filipinos are quiet as mice. (Later, we have a lot to say under our breath about the noisy idiot who raised his hand.)

I’ve often wondered about that. Is it shyness? Uncertainty? Does speaking out defy some cultural code we are sworn to obey? Are we just afraid of competing and failing?

These times favor us. In the New Order, there will be greater strides made by collaborating, instead of competing, and I think we are naturally good at that. The more information gets shared, the greater the impetus will be to innovate in any organization.

Cultivate the ability to thrive in teamwork.
Be passionate about the things you believe in.
When faced with a crisis and the danger of losing something valuable, focus more on what you need to learn to deserve keeping it, not so much on how you can avoid the experience.

It has helped me that like you, I am associated with a great brand --- our company is respected as the leader in our industry and as a social innovator. Recently, our new management has taken it forward a few more steps, recognizing that no company can sustain success unless it is willing to change. If we, your elders, do our jobs well, then we shall enjoy the fresh leadership of those who, like us, are not afraid to fail. I hope you will be counted in that generation.

Soon after you invited me to give this talk, a friend who heard about it said to me, “Aha, Ateneo Commencement Speaker! … Aba, Ems, you have arrived!”

It made me nervous, but at the same time, it was also tremendously reassuring.

Congratulations once again, and thank you.


Emily Abrera
Chairman Emeritus
McCann Worldgroup

Commencement Speech
2007 Ateneo de Manila
Humanites & Social Sciences