It’s Friday of week 40 of COVID. Wow. 40 weeks. The time it takes to make a baby.

What’s being born this year? What have these 40 weeks brought forth?

It’s also the end of Fall Quarter. For our third-year students, GAP and BCO are complete, the capstone program finished. For our first-year students, grades will be coming soon, the first grades of FEMBA. For all of us, we are close to completing 2020, this remarkable year of a global pandemic, economic slow-down, social justice reckoning, and presidential election: four stress-tests all interconnected.

What have I learned? What do the failures teach me?

In the Fall of 1993, my first quarter of my MBA, I got my grades back: one Pass, one A, one B and one C. A C! That seemed bad. That seemed like a failure. I was terrified.

I assumed that a C meant I was going to get kicked out of graduate school. Nobody told me this. I just assumed it. Remember, this was 1993. No internet. No websites to double-check. I was home for this holidays. My grades came in the mail in a letter. I spent three weeks assuming that I was going to go back to school, and the door for me was going to be locked. It was just a matter of time. I had failed.

I had never made a C in college.

In undergrad, as a sophomore electrical engineer, I received a 54 on the mid-term in honors physics. I promptly q-dropped the course so that it would not be part of my GPA, and switched my major to Spanish.

That’s how scared I was of a C. I changed my whole major, the entire course of my education, out of the fear of failure. Instead of pushing through, getting a tutor, asking for help, learning new study habits, approaching the TA, approaching the professor, I ran away from failure.

COVID-life is different. I’ve failed many times this year. But with COVID-life, I can’t run away. I’m here at home with my wife, two sons and two happy-yappy puppies, sharing space, sharing bandwidth, sharing life 24/7 as we shelter-at-home.

I’ve failed repeatedly to “do everything right” during COVID. I’ve watched too much Netflix, too much basketball, too much YouTube. I’ve eaten too many comfort cookies. I’ve tried too many new ideas without doing rigorous cost-benefit analysis of the resource requirements and the constraints of the moment.

And I’m learning.

I’m learning to be a better manager. All these failures are not fatal.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be. – Coach John Wooden

As you reflect this holiday, as you make an inventory of 2020, make sure you make two columns Failures and Successes.

It’s going to be OK.

2021 is going to get here.

Happy Holidays all.