Can an Early Setback Enable Future Success?
I was fired from my first job for incompetence.
You’d think a fresh English major grad with a technology bent would excel as an assistant editor for a computer networking publication. What I learned quickly was that writing papers about Faulkner and Hemingway has nothing to do with journalism.
What I didn’t learn fast enough is that journalism is much more about objectivity and attention to detail and a lot less about interpretation or “what you think,” the rallying cry of my English professors. And my boss at the publication didn’t have the patience or inclination to teach me how to be a journalist.
I’m incredibly thankful for that unceremonious ending to my first attempt at writing professionally. It taught me that jobs are fragile and drove me to be much more detail-oriented the rest of my career, which turned out pretty good.
Comparing Early Failure and Early Success
You’ve probably heard lots of stories like mine. But anecdotal stories about people who failed early and later went on to do great things doesn’t prove anything. It could be that early success more likely leads to later success. Seems like a question for science!
Lucky for us, the same brilliant Northwestern researchers who uncovered the secrets of success across disparate domains came up with another startling revelation: early career setbacks do predict future success.
The researchers separated first time NIH grant submitters into two cohorts: a “narrow win” group, whose scores were barely above the threshold to receive a grant, and “near miss” applicants, who were close to receiving a grant but just missed. The researchers then defined the two groups in such a way that the scores of the “near miss” and “narrow win” applicants were so close that they were statistically the same.
The researchers then analyzed the careers of the two cohorts. In the “near miss” group, 12% left medical research altogether and went on to become clinicians or changed careers completely. Sadly, they disappeared from the medical research world, never to contribute again.
This finding is even sadder when considering the “near miss” applicants who went on to make another grant application systematically outperformed1 those in the “narrow win” cohort.
“Near miss” applicants systematically outperformed the “narrow win” cohort.
Those who failed to get their first NIH application granted:
Published 12% more papers.
Had 21% more “hit papers” (those in the top 5% of citations).
Published 50% more papers that included a clinical trial, an indication that the paper had potential for real impact.
So applicants who were knocked down and got back up outperformed those who were never knocked down. The question is why.
The researchers looked at what they called the screening hypothesis—that early failures screened out less determined people, leaving only those more likely to succeed in the pool. But their calculations indicate that screening did not account for all the difference between the two groups. The researchers hypothesized two more reasons an early setback helped people in their career.
Failure teaches valuable lessons that are simply harder to learn otherwise. That’s my personal experience. How many times did people warn me about paying attention to detail before I was fired for missing something important. Life lessons are real.
Success breeds complacency. That is people who succeed on their first try just don’t work as hard or as intensely as the people who’ve suffered a setback.
Are The Winners Actually Losers?
Hypothesis #2 suggests that the “narrow win” researchers may ultimately have had less productive careers because they succeeded on their first attempt. I’ve encountered a few anecdotal stories that support this finding.
For example, entrepreneurs who create a huge hit on their first business, but never repeat their success again. There are many serial entrepreneurs, but few who produce winner after winner. In a similar vein, I’ve come across sales people who had a giant win early in their career, but after that big sale, they have trouble replicating more big sales wins.
Whether you’ve had early failures or early wins, what matters most is how you respond to those experiences. If you’ve been hit by a setback, take your lumps and recognize it as an opportunity to learn and that might have been just what you needed to reach greater heights. And if you’ve been winning your whole life, think about the possibility that you could be even more successful with a bit more grit and intensity.
Have you had an early success or failure affect your career? Please share your story in the Comments!
1 Wang, Yan, Benjamin F. Jones, and Dashun Wang. “Early-career Setback and Future Career Impact.” Nature Communications 10, no. 1 (October 1, 2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12189-3.