John Danner - The Other F Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work

We are all in the innovation industry now. To adapt, most organizations must rise to a new level of risk-taking, experimentation, and tolerance for failure. In fact the winners continually reinvest in failure because they know it's a source of breakthroughs. No one knows this better than Danner and Coopersmith, who have delivered a brilliant and engaging handbook in The Other F Word. Let them help you find new levels of success by creating a culture of constructive failure in your organization.

Randy Komisar, General Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

This excellent book is so needed. Failure is a gift. As a senior relationship manager (think sales), I make the Hall of Fame if I win 3 out of 10 pitches. That means I encounter the other F word 70 percent of the time. And that is a good day. So why not view no as an invitation to yes, and failure as the gateway to success? Learn, laugh, move forward differentlykeep at it. Danner and Coopersmith's book shows you and your team how to do that, and win.

Barbara Byrne, Vice-Chair, Investment Banking, Barclays Capital

Danner and Coopersmith present a very valuable perspective into the most important ingredient for entrepreneurial success: failure. This is an excellent guide to what gives Silicon Valley its unique global advantagethe acceptance and embrace of failure. Entrepreneurship is all about experimentation; learning from failure is the key to success. This tells you everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about failureand success.

Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow of Policy & Research, Singularity University; faculty, Stanford and Duke University; TIME magazine Top 40 Minds in Tech

I tell entrepreneurs around the world that the best way to avoid failure is to listen to the right people in the first place. If you want to learn about the power and potential of the other F word and what you can do to leverage it in your organization, the right people to listen to are John Danner and Mark Coopersmith. Hats off to them for creating this indispensable user's manual to becoming a more failure-savvy leader, avoiding it when you can and harnessing it when you can't.

Jeff Hoffman, co-founder, Priceline.com; Partner and co-founder, ColorJar

Failure IS an option. By leaning into failure, entrepreneurial leaders can inspire new levels of creative capacity building and employee engagement. Simultaneously, organizations can develop, build, and grow talent-rich pipelines of failure resilient leaders who can experiment, iterate more, and lead better. Danner and Coopersmith make it clear that failure is not the buzz word du jour, but a strategic competitive advantage of high potential, adaptive leaders and failure-savvy organizations. It is my sincere hope this book encourages leaders to dream bigger and bolder and to shutter their incremental strategic plans in favor of institutionalizing a failure-smart culture that leverages and integrates organizational learning, growth, and innovation. Lean in and enjoy the ride!

Karl R. LaPan, Chairman and Interim CEO, National Business Incubation Association (NBIA)

Danner and Coopersmith have unlocked the way to make failing not just a lesson learned in your company but a cultural transformation that accelerates growth and engagement. They provide the know-how for creating a culture that rewards risk-taking and inspires creative thinking.

Nancy Schlichting, CEO, Henry Ford Health System

No one ever sets out to fail. But being afraid to fail means you'll be afraid to try. Playing it safe gets you nowhere. That's why the Lean Startup discipline embraces failure as a key resource for strategic insight. Whether you're an entrepreneur or an executive in a large company, this essential book shows you how to harness failure to get the results you want.

Steve Blank, father of the Lean Startup movement and author of The Startup Owner's Manual

It is very rare to find a book such as The Other F Word that is so fun, profound, and practical, all at the same time. The book needs to come with a warning that it is very hard to put down.

Derek Lidow, Princeton professor, entrepreneur, and author of Startup Leadership

Whether you're a hardened CEO or a rising star, if you're looking for opportunity, don't overlook failure. It might be market failure that points the way to your next high-impact venture; or an internal failure that highlights where you ought to pivot. Either way, this novel, clear-thinking book can be your guide. Danner and Coopersmith have translated their decades of experience with startups, mid-size and global businesses into a practical and creative executive's guide to the other F word.

Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO, Endeavor; author of Crazy Is a Compliment

I've seen thousands of businesses over my career, from ambitious startups and growing small businesses to thriving multinationals and dying enterprises living in their past. As much as they all crave success, what can really separate the winners from the losers is how effectively they deal with the central topic of this must-read book: failure and the fear of it that stifles innovation and limits real employee commitment. Danner and Coopersmith offer a winning and refreshingly practical framework that can improve your company's odds of success.

Pete Hart, retired Chairman and CEO, Silicon Valley Bank; former CEO, MasterCard International

Great innovators don't fear failure. They learn from it. They build on it. In this pragmatic guide, John Danner and Mark Coopersmith tell you how to think about failure in a positive wayand use it to create value.

Walter Isaacson, President and CEO, Aspen Institute; former Chairman/CEO, CNN; bestselling biographer of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Henry Kissinger

The Other F Word profiles how to transform your organization from one which fears failure, assigns blame, and discourages breakthrough thinking into one which maximizes learning and embraces a way of working to establish a competitive edge and a pathway to winning performance. An important read!

Jim Goldman, former CEO, Godiva

Leadership is a rare blend of confidence and humility, and nowhere is this more evident than in the way that leaders handle the inevitable failures that come their way. Danner and Coopersmith write about how to manage failure to your advantage, from moving through your fear to creating the failure-savvy organization that can thrive amid all sorts of disruptions. Whether you're in the C-suite or a leader on the front lines, I recommend that you make the bold move of putting failure to work. The Other F Word will show you how.

Charlene Li, Founder and CEO, Altimeter Group, speaker, and bestselling author of Groundswell and Open Leadership

Danner and Coopersmith show you how to change your relationship with failure. Start putting this book to work before you make another moveif you want to succeed.

Guy Kawasaki, Chief Evangelist, Canva; author of The Art of Social Media

A great reminder why the world's best coaches and athletes spend endless hours watching game films just to embrace the power of The Other F Word. This book's an All-Star playbook in any league.

Leo Kiely, Director, Altria Group Inc.; retired CEO, MillerCoors

While failure can be a great teacher, one has to be a willing student. But learning's only valuable when it's put into practice. That's where The Other F Word