From the Far Eastern Shore of Maryland
You typically do not hear about the failures of Walt Disney. Some of his failures were minor like the time Walt previewed “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at a college. The students walked out halfway through the movie. Walt was devastated and severely depressed. The truth was, the students only left because of a college curfew that was in place at the time.
One of his major failures was the premiere of Pinocchio. For the opening day movie, Walt had the catastrophic idea of using little people (midgets) dressed as Pinocchio dancing and greeting the children as they entered the theater.
The actors were placed on top of the marquee to do their routine.
Walt figured that since they were going to be up there for a few hours, that he would provide them with food (never got touched) and wine (good to the last drop).
The diminutive people proceeded to get drunk and hurl insults at the arriving guests. Eventually, some of them decided it was too hot and started dancing around naked until the cops showed up.
To say the least, Walt was mortified.
This was back in the 1940’s. But did this incident stop Walt?
Of course not. Just look at the company today.
What do 11 drunk midgets have to do with your business?
Failures, however spectacular, do not have to define you. Sure, we can shrug off little problems and failures. But what about the big doosies?
How you react and recover from large, sometimes embarrassing failures, is all up to you.
Will you just crawl into a remote cave, curl up into the fetal position and live off of tree bark?
Or will you show tenacity, resolve and even greater creativity despite of the failure?
You decide.
