then. And I said, ‘Yes sir. That’s correct.’ So he stood up and
held out his hand. He said, ‘I just want to congratulate you. All
business is making decisions, and if you don’t make decisions,
you won’t have any failures. The hardest job I have is getting
people to make decisions. If you make that same decision
wrong again, I’ll fire you. But I hope you’ll make a lot of
others, and that you’ll understand there are going to be more
failures than successes.’”
Sydney Pollack said, “When I work with inexperienced ac-
tors, I try to convince them that it’s not possible to make a mis-
take. I say the only way they can make a mistake is by trying
not to make a mistake, because that’ll create tension and ten-
sion will tie them up every time.... There is an enormous
timidity about trusting the impulse. One spends an awful lot of
time in life trying to get insurance beforehand that whatever
bit of behavior is going to happen is at best impressive, but at
the very least, acceptable and not foolish. A really good actor
has got to be capable of making an enormous fool out of him-
self. Otherwise, no original work gets done.”
Trusting the impulse always leads to growth, although
sometimes through mistakes. Sometimes trusting the impulse
leads directly to brilliance. That kind of impulse—the blessed
impulse—we’ll return to in the next chapter.
Horace B. Deets, executive director of AARP until he re-
tired in 2002, was equally emphatic about the need to establish
a tolerant culture. Now a senior advisor to the organization,
Deets said, “I try to encourage as much openness and contrary
views as possible. It’s important to encourage dissent and em-
brace error.”
Shirley Hufstedler summed it up, saying, “If you haven’t
failed, you haven’t tried very hard.”
Knowing the World