When the lesson is failure

When I was in journalism school in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1987, one of my placements was with the local CBC television station. My claim to fame from that time is that I rubbed shoulders with Ian Hanomansing and Susan Ormiston, both of whom were covering provincial news at the time. My claim to infamy from the same time is the day I failed to deliver what a reporter needed. 

I had been sent out to get a clip from a person who had been involved in an accident; said person was a distance out of town so the camera man (that tells you how long ago it was; 1987 to be precise) drove. Once we arrived, we learned that the person we needed wasn’t immediately available, so we waited. And we waited. I think I must have been responsible for calling the shots, as I was the journalist (albeit only an intern), so we continued to wait. No cell phones back then, of course. 

Eventually, the young man arrived home; it was cold and dark by then, but I gamely asked the necessary questions (my hands were frozen holding the microphone) and the camera man rolled tape (literally). We wrapped up and headed back to Halifax and the studio, where the real journalist was waiting for the tape from which he needed to splice a short excerpt into his longer piece. 

The problem, however, was that it was past six p.m. by the time we arrived back in the studio and the evening newscast had already started. My perfect interview was no good to the journalist. And he told me so in no uncertain terms. His piece ran without my contribution. Sure, I had delivered the requested goods, but past the deadline, so they were useless. (I do not understand how I failed to compute that the deadline was important; a major mistake in a deadline-driven world.) 

I felt like the amateur I, indeed, was, but I learned three important lessons that I carry with me still, more than 30 years later: 

• Perfection is not necessarily desirable — or achievable. 
• Always have a Plan B up your sleeve. 
• Make the deadline, regardless of all else. 

Over the years, I've translated these three learnings into a bottom line that, today, I teach my students: Mistakes are inevitable and failure happens, so it’s what you learn from the experience and how you recover that tells the real story. 

Photo credit: chuttersnap on Unsplash