It's not failure. It's steps to success!

Between 2006-2007, I worked on a joint venture project called the Joint Asian Derivatives Exchange (JADE), a US-Singapore attempt to get commodity futures trading going in rubber and crude palm oil.  

That year was a difficult year. I had just moved to this new job, and the big project for me then was to coordinate and write the rules for this novel construct, where the contracts would be traded in the US but cleared in Singapore. I was completely unfamiliar with the financial industry and commodities industry, and lacked meaningful experience in writing business rules. 

With what seemed like a thousand internal and external stakeholders, I was pushed around from pillar to post, all the while being yelled at by my boss and the regulators. I received reams of input and suggestions from banks, brokers, lawyers and colleagues, and I'd often read their inscrutable comments and wonder - am I stupid, or are they stupid? [Experience now tells me, looking back, that it was often both :D]

After many long months of slogging through a haze of late nights and cryptic regulatory and business requirements, the JV finally started operations. Hooray! 

But within a year or so, the JV was discontinued! Why? Well, there were a number of reasons, not least of which included the JV partner getting acquired by a competitor. 

But the fact was, the JV really wasn't working well anyway. In any event, it seemed like all the work that I had put in, along with everyone else, was completely wasted. ARGH, a total loss of all of that year's tremendous effort.

I hadn't heard about the JADE project for many years, until this past week, when a soon-to-be-retired colleague was asked to share his experience over the years at an offsite. And he mentioned JADE! 

And he reflected - you know, we really put in so much work into JADE. And it just didn't work. 

But. Within a year, we decided to start our own commodities clearing business, Asiaclear. We started with petrochemical swaps in about 2008. That worked a little better. But it still wasn't quite it. Then we started clearing iron ore swaps in 2009. It wasn't an immediate success either. 

But we kept working on it. We'd learned a lot of lessons about how to write good rules. How to persuade regulators. How to work internally. How to engage our customers. How to grow from one stage of business growth to the next. 

Today, we are a world-leading venue for iron ore derivatives, with almost 3 million contracts traded in March 2023 alone. More "paper" iron ore contracts trade than actual iron ore, and that's A LOT, because iron ore is, in case you didn't realise, the second most traded commodity in the world, only behind crude oil. And perhaps we'd never have done it, if not for JADE.

Hearing my colleague connect the past "failure" of JADE with the present success of our commodities business was quite a light bulb moment. I always regarded that 2006-07 period as a bit of a waste of time, since no business benefit transpired. But I was wrong. There was a benefit. A huge one. All the mistakes we made on JADE allowed us to learn, and succeed later on with Asiaclear, on a much bigger stage than we could have dreamed. 

Coincidentally, earlier that week, the Milwaukee Bucks, the number 1 seeded NBA basketball team in the Eastern Conference, had just been eliminated by the 8th seeded Miami Heat. At the closing press conference, a reporter asked the Bucks' superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, was the year a failure?

And Giannis responded, a little irritably, but insightfully.

"Do you get a promotion every year, on your job? No, right? So every year you don't get a promotion, that's a failure? No!

Every year you work, you work towards something, towards a goal, which is to get a promotion, to take care of your family, provide a home for them, take care of your parents...

There's good days, bad days, some days you are able to be successful, some days you are not. Some days it's your turn, some days it's not your turn.

It's not failure. It's steps to success."

It's not failure. It's steps to success.

Everyone goes through difficult times, times when we seem to be stuck, or worse, going backward. But if we keep moving forward, there's a chance that we're just taking steps to success.

The Bible has an even better account of steps to success.

As a boy, Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt. For about twenty years, he went through setback after setback. 

After being sold to the slavers, he was indentured as a servant. He was a successful servant, but unfortunately his master's wife falsely accused him, and so all his progress disintegrated and he was thrown in jail. 

While Joseph was in jail, he gained the favour of the jailor, and even helped a fellow prisoner receive a pardon and be restored to the king's service. But that prisoner completely forgot about Joseph and left him in jail! So again, all his progress fell apart.

Finally, years later, Joseph was remembered and lifted out of prison, and eventually rose to become the equivalent of prime minister. Through wise management of resources, he saved Egypt and all the surrounding nations from famine, even his brothers who had betrayed him.

In his book "Walking with God through Suffering and Pain", Tim Keller observes that Joseph must have been praying and working for years, hoping to get himself out of these messes. Every time he seemed to be making progress through his hard work with his masters and jailors, something would happen to set him back. 

God essentially said "no" relentlessly, over and over to Joseph's requests for 20 years. 

Most people would have given up and said, "If God is going to shut the door in my face every time I pray, year in, year out, then I give up". But Joseph didn't. Even in prison, the first thing he did when faced with any challenge was to turn to God.

As Keller writes: "The point is this - God was hearing and responding to Joseph's prayers for deliverance, rescue and salvation, but not in the ways or forms or times Joseph asked for it. [Yet] during all this time in which God seemed hidden, Joseph trusted God nonetheless."

It's all very well to say, pfft. Failure. It's just steps to success. 

It's inspiring. But it might not actually be true. There isn't always a happy ending. We know this. People can work through setback after setback, only to find at the end, still no success. UNLESS.

Unless we are walking in the direction of, and alongside, the One who does not fail. Unless we are holders of an unbreakable Promise. An unshakeable Provider. A sure Deliverer, in The End.

Then, like Joseph, we can keep turning to God, even over the barren years. He is God. He is good (Psalm 145). Not one of His promises will ever fail, every one has been fulfilled (Joshua 23:14). And His love endures forever (Psalm 136).

So, keep working. Keep moving. Keep trusting. 

He makes all things beautiful in His time! (Ecclesiastes 3:11)