William Smithburg, the chairman of a large food company, took responsibility for two major mistakes. He said "There isn't one manager who hasn't had a product that did badly. That includes me. It's like learning to ski. If you're not falling down, you're not learning." Tom Watson, Sr., who founded IBM and was its guiding force for over 40 years, knew the importance of learning from mistakes. A young manager at IBM took a big risk on a product, and lost over $10 million. When the nervous manager climbed up the stairs to Watson's office, the nervous manager said, "I guess you want me to quit my job?" Watson said, "You can't be serious. We've just spent $10 million educating you!" The lesson here, understood by these captains of industry, is that failure equals learning. While we can't say that they exactly welcomed failure, they were uniform in their ability to profit from it. They used the healthy energy coming from failure to reach higher goals. Almost every "false step" was regarded as an opportunity and not as the end of the world.