Own your failure

The other day I came across a good piece of advice on failures and defeat. In all its simplicity, it goes like this:

You must take ownership of your failure.

This is to be understood in such a way that when you lose (and one can lose in many contexts), then there is no reason to see yourself as a victim, or to make excuses. You must, of course, try to understand why and come up with explanations so that it becomes possible to correct your actions next time - but basically you have to accept that you have lost and take the defeat on yourself. Only when we do this, we able to improve ourselves and thereby have a chance of avoiding to take ownership of more defeat, the next time we try to win.
(Translated from "Tag ejerskab over dit nederlag")

On the topic of good reasons

We see quite it often in our daily lives - for example in the public or in our jobs - that we are subject to procedural changes that seem downright foolish; but there must be a good reason, because why change the procedures if there isn't?
The big problem is just that in most cases the modifications are allowed to appear stupid without contradiction because no good explanation is given; and one simply begins to assume that there probably are no good explanations. Much of this could be avoided if only a good explanation was given when it was there - because then we would understand that a good reason actually existed. And the same principle we should use in our own communication: if there is a good reason - tell it!
Of course there is a risk to end up in situations like the one known from the movie "A Few Good Men," where the words come from Jack Nicholson's mouth: "You can't handle the truth!" But well - let's take these situations when they arise. I think the biggest problem will be that in the cases that remain unexplained, one will become even more convinced that the good reason does not exist.
(Translated from Noget om gode grunde, originally posted August 22, 2013)