Noone can predict with certainty what people are going to do in the future. We don't even know if -to stay with the example- athlets are taking performance inhancing substances which can not be detected as we speak. What if their genes were manipulated or similar?
Should we, just in case, not give any athlete a medal? Can we really never give people recognition because of the fear it might not stand in future?

And what if they 'failed' in the past and get the medal taken away, does that mean everything that person has ever done is worthless or bad? I don't think so. Does that make the failiure acceptable? Surely not.

I reiterate it is the intent behind the recommendation. If that is authentic and meant in good faith (without commercial incentive) then I cannot see it to be anything than positive to acknowledge the contribution of others.

Angela - your HMO's often seem to be on steroids to me!!

As per sentiment on this thread, failure (unless it was orchestrated to avoid responsibility) should not be derided. Without failing, no one would learn anything at all!

Other people's failures can help us all make more informed choices. The person who failed, and who learns from their mistakes, can rebuild and achieve fantastic success.

Failure can very often be the springboard to success through lessons learned.

And success can be the platform for future failure.

In some ways it is all about how you view what happened and then what you do with the experience. Wisdom can come from failure. It is harder to find wisdom in success as failure is more definite.

Wisdom comes from many directions. I worry about people who have failed on a big scale. I dont feel failure is a pre cursor to wisdom. No doubt people will learn from their failure but the lack of wisdom just prior to that failure would cause me concern about their ability to have wisdom in the future. What shortcomings did they have to precipitate the fall in the first place. If it was something totally outside their control then that maybe different but if it was a poor business decision then there may be an inherent weakness in them which may resurface next time.

I see success as a series of mini steps in a forward direction to meet your goals. On that journey you will inevitably face a series of setbacks ( not failures) from which you learn and mature and grow. Some will be mini setbacks some maybe major. Each time you adjust and learn and adapt picking up wisdom points along the way. At no point do you fail. If you did then all those wisdom points which you gained could be in fact bogus points as because the main structure has collapsed so you would have to question whether they were valid wisdom points in the first place. You have to start over. the successful person will have a good head start and therefore an advantage. Their wisdom point score will be probably always be greater. They will also have an added advantage in they can look at the reason for the failure in others and gain added wisdom from that ensuring they dont follow the path they probably avoided anyway in the first place.

If I climb a mountain I can take a small stumble after 1000 steps and fall a few feet and learn from my mistake
I dont have to fall all the way to the bottom of that mountain to learn the same lesson from that mistake

Jonathan,

I found your response interesting. You seem to define things a certain way and then reach a conclusion that your definitions must be right.

Let's look at Lehman. They failed after something like 130 years of existence. At any point before the failure that put them out of business they could easily argue that they were a success as the setbacks are not failures.

Or look at Northern Rock. They were around for about 130 years until they were no longer.

I am not sure existence proves success and a fatal business mistake means the person could not succeed in the future (assume it was only the business that died). Henry Ford had two bankruptcies.

I just do not see failure as a binary indicator and I think you are thinking along the same lines when you talk about setbacks. I agree that you do not have to fall to the bottom of the mountain to learn that something is not right. That said, if you did fall all the way to the bottom, is that unlucky or a sign that all your climbing prior was all a mistake of some sort?

Lessons are what we learn from experience. My definition. Good or bad experiences can shape the lessons. As many threads have demonstrated, different people take away different things from exactly the same example. Our assumptions are a strong filter and we tend to see what we assume is possible or likely. We miss a lot based on the filters. This is more than just conceptual. The physical eyes take in 5 times more detail than the brain is ever given access to. We physically pre-filter details out before the brain can even apply assumptions.

Many successful business go out of business and we sometimes claim it was out of their control. Unless all of the competitors went out of business at the same time, I would argue that the choices each business made were in their control and some chose more wisely. It might have been random luck or conscious choice.