Near the end of the eighteenth century, Europeans began an extensive exploration of the Pacific coast of Canada. Captain George Vancouver explored the coast of British Columbia in the 1790’s in his 340-ton Royal Navy frigate H.M.S. Discovery.

He was looking for the Northwest Passage.

In fact, in June of 1792 he sailed up one of BC’s many ‘fiords’ in search of the Northwest Passage. The inlet did not lead where he had hoped, so he sailed back out after naming it “Jervis’s Canal” in honor of Admiral Sir John Jervis. This ‘canal’ is known today as Jervis Inlet.

Jervis Inlet is one of the many spectacularly glorious fiords along the inside passage of the BC coast featuring towering mountains thousands of feet tall, plunging into glorious crystal-blue waters teeming with aquatic life. This is some of the most incredible scenery the world has to offer. Yet, there was no Northwest Passage.

Vancouver failed in his attempt to discover the Northwest Passage, which was finally navigated in 1903-06, by Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen. Where Vancouver failed, Amundsen succeeded.

Christopher Columbus sailed west in 1492 to discover a new route to Asia – the East Indies. He landed on San Salvador Island in what we know today as the Bahamas. His quest to find the East Indies was a failure. He did, however, make a significant contribution to the history of the world by discovering North America.

So, Vancouver failed in his quest to find the Northwest Passage and Columbus failed in his quest to discover a new route to the East Indies. We obviously do not look upon either of these men as failures.

Here is my point: leaders are often limited by a fear of failure. There is a perception in our modern day psyche that failure is something we must avoid at all costs. We narrowly define failure as not accomplishing our objective. By that definition both Vancouver and Columbus were failures.

And that of course, is preposterous.

It’s time for us to redefine failure. As leaders we must think like courageous trailblazers in the marvelous age of exploration. We must think like explorers and lead like explorers.

We have a primary objective of course, but along the way one of our secondary objectives is to explore new territory. To map out new ways of doing things; moving forward on a quest to discover, to learn, to grow, to be driven by curiosity into new mysterious frontiers.

When we set off in a particular direction pursuing our primary objective, then determine it does not lead to what we want to accomplish, we should not deem this a failure. We have discovered something new along the way, and if nothing else we have eliminated one means for accomplishing our goal.

I love what Thomas Edison said about failing in regard to his quest to invent the light bulb,

“I have not failed 10,000 times. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Here is what I propose leaders adopt as a definition of failure:

“Failing to trying. To give up.”

Sure there are circumstances when we need to stop moving in a certain direction, to abandon a course of action that is clearly not yielding the desired results. However, we must then continue on in another direction: to keep moving forward.

We cannot define failure as an inability to accomplish a stated object. If we do we inhibit people’s willingness to take risks, to step out of their comfort zones, to demonstrate curiosity and creativity, and we will kill innovation. We must think like explorers: we are on a journey of discovery to seek out new processes, products and services.

In the inimitable words of Captain James T. Kirk – slightly altered for leadership:

“Leadership: the final frontier. These are the voyages of those who lead. Our life-long mission: to explore creative new strategies; to seek out new products, new processes and new services; to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Yes, it’s time to lead like an explorer.