Review: The Power of Failure: Succeeding in the Age of Innovation

The Power of Failure: Succeeding in the Age of Innovation by Fran Tarkenton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently found Fran Tarkenton’s second book at a used bookstore, a 1969 description of his life in football, consisting mostly of his responses to an interview. In it, he details the personal events and anecdotes relating to his football life, like meetings with coaches, player descriptions based on first-hand experience playing with and against others, and key plays in a number of games. That is the “tactical” version of his autobiography. But he also wrote about the philosophy behind certain football plays, and describes how he became a “scrambling” quarterback. From these parts of his story, you can understand that he was always thinking, was always looking for an angle, and understood the value of coming up with the right move at exactly the right time. He excelled at timing.

Move forward 46 years. (Holy cow! Is that correct?!?!) Tarkenton’s newest book, “The Power of Failure”, while including a number of football stories, is more his “business autobiography”. He begins the book with some anecdotes to explain to the reader, who may never have seen him play football (Tarkenton retired from playing in 1978), some of his personality, in particular grit. He tells how he went to play football for a team that had too many quarterbacks, making it unlikely that he’d have playing time for most of his college career. But by staying aware of the action during games, he found an opportunity to enter a game, and made an impression that led to him playing more in college and being drafted into the professional ranks by the Minnesota Vikings. After reading this anecdote detailed for quite a few pages, I assumed much of the rest of the book would be about football. Instead, Tarkenton skips past most of his professional football and television careers, and focuses on the companies he has begun. The theme of his business career has been to look for opportunities where others don’t see them, take advantage of the opportunities, reward your best partners, and get out in a timely manner. This is the same mindset he had as a scrambling quarterback, albeit at a slower pace and without so many leg injuries. He tells of coming up with ideas for businesses, building new business onto existing businesses, and the decisions on selling off parts of the business when the results aren’t quite as expected. He has had his hand in many businesses, including a multi-cuisine fast-food chain, a company that printed advertising on airline ticket jackets, a small-business consulting organization, a major software firm that made programming easier, and a financial products sales organization. The bulk of the book describes his mostly hands-on interest in these businesses, their birth, life, and sometimes their failure. Tarkenton’s anecdotes show how the “scrambler” from his quarterbacking days thrived in the business environment. As a fan of Tarkenton’s football years, and a fan of business books that include specifics, I found this a wonderful book. I enjoyed Tarkenton’s analysis of his businesses, but I also enjoyed the autobiographical aspects, where Tarkenton explained his personality, and showed how his tenacity and his intelligence about timing in business, as in life. You can take away the understanding of the mindset that enabled him to build a life in business.


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