The benefit of failing fast

Have you or your team failed recently? What was your response?

It surprised me when I first read the Bible, that this book intended to help us find faith, was full of people's failures and failed plans. Amazing! Maybe I expected the stories of perfect saints who always made wise decisions.

This helped me to understand that since the pioneers in the Old and New Testament often failed, I should expect my team or I to also have plans that might fail – even after praying for guidance.

Some time ago, our team decided to find business sponsors to pay for a sports team's international trip. The plan made sense.

However, the host country’s sports authority was slow to approve the competitions, so it was too late to arrange businesses as sponsors. The plan failed, and we had to meet and develop a new plan – a better one.

As some of our team's plans failed, we learned more from the failures than the successes. Sometimes they were small failures and sometimes they were significant. But each failure taught us to pray, evaluate and finetune the plans we felt made sense.

What is the benefit of quickly finding out your plan didn't work? The faster you fail and realize something doesn't work, the quicker you can correct your course.

Pray with your team for wisdom. Work out the plan you believe the Lord is directing you to execute.

Execute the plan even though it has risk of failure. If your plan fails, bring the team back together, acknowledge the plan didn't work, pray again, design a new plan, and try again.

Scripture to ponder – Proverbs 19:21

Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Key Lesson: Remember – be willing to fail quickly, so you can find a plan that succeeds.