Wind power CEO Paul Gaynor: "Failure has made me skeptical about outcomes"

Paul Gaynor, CEO of First Wind, outlined several of his failures and what he learned from them in a first-person article in the New York Times:

I failed my first computer science course. The phone call to my dad to tell him did not go well. I switched to mechanical engineering and found it more intuitive....

I next worked as senior vice president and chief financial officer for a start-up pipeline development company in London that G.E. owned with another company.

That start-up lit an entrepreneurial fire under me. It was highly risky and didn't succeed, but it was an unbelievable learning experience....

I joined a few colleagues from G.E. who had started an investment company in 2003 to take advantage of the disruption in the power market after the Enron bankruptcy and the California energy crisis. It was another high-risk proposition, and we stayed at it for a year but did not do well.

Failure has influenced my perspectives on business. I learned more from my couple of negative experiences than from the successes. Failure has made me skeptical about outcomes, which has influenced how I run First Wind. We take credit for something only when it actually happens and not a second before, because you can get burned in the final seconds of a deal.

Bravo to Gaynor for laying out his failures plainly and not sugar-coating them. He has clearly developed resilience and the ability to see the world as it is, instead of how he wishes it would be.