“I Fail Therefore I Am” – Why Failure Is Fundamental to Success
Simon Hartley from Be World Class and The Sixsess Consultancy’s Barry Eustance on What It Really Means to Learn and Grow
Success isn’t the absence of failure – it’s built on top of it.
In high-performing organisations, failure isn’t shameful – it’s essential.
It’s how we learn, test, iterate, and improve.
In this short clip, Simon Hartley shares a phrase that reframes failure in a deeply human and empowering way:
“I fail therefore I am.”
A riff on Descartes’ famous quote, it reminds us that to fail is to be human – and learning through failure is how progress is made.
Watch this short if your team is trying to build a culture of innovation, learning, or agility. Because failure, done right, is a feature – not a flaw.
Transcript
“……’I fail therefore I am.‘ And it was…obviously a take on René Descartes, “I think therefore I am”, but I was thinking, well, everybody fails.
To fail is to be human.
And René Descartes was trying to say that to think is to be human.
That’s how we know that we exist because we think.
And I’m thinking, well, I know that I’m human because I fail all the time, because that’s what human beings do.
So I fail, therefore I am. And Louise, who does all of our graphic design work, drew that up as a little meme.
That one also seems to travel.”
Watch the full conversation
Key to the Door – Simon Hartley’s book
Be World Class
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Keywords
leadership development, failure and success, learning through failure, business agility, innovation mindset, growth culture, Simon Hartley, Barry Eustance, Be World Class, Key to the Door, Sixsess Consultancy, organisational learning, fail fast, fail forward