Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new

Albert Einstein

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First, a little story. I spent my first 13 years as an engineer working at a regulated monopoly. Let’s just say, they were not big risk takers. I spent more time writing memos about what I invented than it actually took to design it.

I once was talking to my boss about possibly designing something that was approaching state-of-the-art, but I wasn’t sure it could be done. He said,

“We don’t mind you taking risks as long as you never fail.”

That comment totally wigged me out! Of course, doing new things most certainly entails the possibility of failure. I thought most people understood that. But my boss who had been with the company many more years than I did, evidently didn’t understand that.

Anyway, skip forward a couple of years, and my employer was suddenly pushed out into the free market. I think it took about 5 years for it to shed its monopoly blanket. Thank heavens, it was a very different company from there on out.