Failing is often seen as a bad thing, but it can also be seen as a necessary component of learning. Failure in agriculture is not the scarlet letter it is in some businesses. It’s just part and parcel of what we do. When working with cows, Mother Nature or the markets, things have a way of turning out differently than one expected. Failure is something you learn from and overcome.

That’s one of the things that makes our industry special. It forces one to have a learning culture, and we are forced almost daily to apply the concept of the scientific method. You form a hypothesis based on observation, create an experiment, measure the results, create a new hypothesis based on the data, and start the process all over again. Thomas Edison is famous for the way he embraced this concept, explaining he did not fail 10,000 times in his efforts to invent the lightbulb; rather, he found 10,000 ways that did not work, all leading to the one that did.

Ranching is a lot like that. There is a lot of trial and error.

Other industries are even more extreme. Until you have failed — and failed big — you aren’t even considered to be ready for big successes in the “tech” industry.

Agriculture has a more muted acceptance of failure. You are expected to overcome a lot of obstacles and mistakes. At the same time, you are expected to avoid colossal blunders. It is a fine edge upon which we are expected to balance. Nobody succeeds without failing, but you are expected to mitigate risk and avoid the size of mistake that can break you, both figuratively and literally. A business that has not experienced some recent failures, almost by definition is stagnant and not growing. Too many or too big of failures and you are out of business.

Two kinds of failure

In the end, it boils down to two kinds of failure. The first leads to growth, new knowledge and more opportunities. The second could be classified as avoidable failures.

The avoidable failure obviously is the wrong kind of failure. Examples come from not learning from other or previous mistakes — things like leaving yourself too exposed to market risks, not being sufficiently prepared for the normal fluctuation in markets or the weather. They can also come from insufficient research or not learning from others who already endured the cost of acquiring data in certain areas, simply ignoring or trying to cheat conventional and hard-earned wisdom.

The right kind of failure comes from stretching, from experimenting, from trying something new.

As the saying goes, you cannot starve profit into a cow. Many people have tried to shortchange the system by neglecting nutrition, herd health or the rules of the marketplace. These are equivalent to leaving the gate open, even though you have had to chase the cows in the last three mornings after leaving that very gate open. These are costly and largely inexcusable kind of mistakes. Like not paying your bills, you can sometimes get away with it, but ultimately it catches up to you.

The other kind of failure is the right kind — failure that comes from stretching, from experimenting, from trying something new. This type of failure leads to much bigger success in the future. This type of failure is a prerequisite to greatness.

It is strange to say that success in ranching boils down to avoiding predictable failures and embracing the failures that lead to success. Every day is about making decisions that can reduce bad outcomes, while at the same time taking calculated risks to make additional opportunities possible.

Logical opportunity

With that said, AngusLink^SM is a program that has proven itself time after time to provide a substantial return on investment. It has the potential to position operations for success now and in the future, and it helps to make the industry, as well as individual operations, more competitive in the future. By nearly any intellectual exercise, it is seemingly a no-brainer. Yet, there are still many producers who have not added it to their marketing arsenal.

The risk is minimal, so it is not the fear of failure that stops producers. Initially there may have been concerns about the risk of being an early adopter, but that no longer is relevant. In this case it is not a fear of failure that is the impediment, but rather simply the fear of change. In this case it is not fear of the unknown, but simply a lack of fear about continuing the status quo.

Not all change is good. Not all failure is bad. But, a lack of growth or lack of desire for improvement is perhaps the No. 1 contributor to the wrong kind of failure.

Editor’s note: Troy Marshall is director of commercial industry relations for the American Angus Association.

Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA, Vol. 16, No. 10-A