Career Track: When is a Good Loss Better than Ho-Hum Success?

Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyewski (pronounced /ʃəˈʃɛvski/shə-SHEV-ski) once noted after his Blue Devils got beat, “We lost, and that’s the main thing that went wrong.”

Hopefully you take have a little more introspection than the storied (and highly successful) Coach K. The fact of the matter is that losses – bumps in your smooth career road – are the types of things that likely boost your career downstream if two things happen: 1) the bumps mostly occur earlier in your career rather than later, and 2) you have the smarts to learn from them.… Read the rest