Success, the Museum of Failures, and Basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo

Success, the Museum of Failures, and Basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo

From Giannis Antetokounmpo’s post-game interview to the Museum of Failure, we’re reminded that progress isn’t linear. A reflection on work, learning, and why every step counts.

Originally published on my Linkedin on November 1, 2025.

Let’s start with the basics. There are 365 days in a year, and on average, Americans work 226 of them. For comparison, it’s 192 days in France, and 179 in Germany, with the hope, of course, that those 226, 192, or the 179 of those workdays are good ones. But, in truth, we have good days and bad days at work. No secret there, and as a colleague recently told me, “It’s called work, and not play for a reason.” So, what makes for a good or bad day?

When you think about your good days, those are the ones filled with successes. The presentation went well, the project was completed, the published article, the launch of a new program, and the opening of the exhibition you’ve been working on. Yet, that’s a list of milestones, successes, moments worthy of celebration, and therefore likely to be remembered. In truth, our good days are far simpler.

You run into a friend after work, and she asks, “How was your day?” “Thanks,” you say, “I had a good day. I got that report, which I’d been working on, submitted for review,” or “I finally got to spend time on that project I’ve been meaning to get to, and I made some good progress.”

Good days are concrete, where we can begin to see the results of our efforts and labor, and where our steps toward progress, however elusive, start to become real. Progress and accomplishments are linked. Most of our good days probably aren’t memorable. Why would they be? Likewise, our bad days aren’t either. The project review didn’t go well. Edits still needed. Changes must happen. The budget will be less than expected. Leadership said “no.” The contours of these actions and moments will, over time, fade and become part of the project’s story. But these are the seeds of bad days; they aren’t failures, like the car crashes in our careers that are memorable; they’re just bad.

Think about the projects that you’re currently working on. Your next steps aren’t necessarily in order, like the instructions for Ikea furniture. Progress isn’t linear, in which you do a and b, and then c follows. Projects instead move forward and backward, with challenges along the way. Issues to be addressed, people to be consulted, changes to be made, conversations to be had, budgets to be updated, memos to be written, meetings, forms, and more meetings.

Success or failure aren’t the typical words we associate with our daily work or workdays. Sure, there are plenty of professions where performance can, and often is, measured daily, but that’s a different conversation altogether. We think of good days and bad days. Only when we step back to plan, set a goal, or reflect on what we’ve done can we see both the trees and the forest.

What happens, however, when the project doesn’t go well, the presentation is a dud, the exhibition doesn’t open on time, the program doesn’t attract an audience, and tickets aren’t sold?

Imagine a program held at your local museum. The program, despite the team’s efforts, attracts little attendance, receives no press coverage, and the feedback received shares a mediocre rating at best. The following Monday, the team comes together to debrief. The few measly surveys collected are passed around. There is plenty of commiseration about what went wrong, what worked, and what could have been better. More outreach and better promotion are discussed, and the so-and-so didn’t help either. Plus, the weather was too nice outside, or it rained, and who could have predicted snow? Our last program didn’t do this badly.

Should the program be considered a failure? What about the museum? Attendance is down compared to last year. And to make matters worse, a local reporter is asking to speak with the director, who is inquiring whether the museum’s performance this year should be viewed as a failure.

Maybe you can’t relate, but a version of this question was asked to Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo after their loss to the Miami Heat, which ended the team’s 2023 season.

Reporter, Eric Nehm: “Do you view this season as a failure?”

Giannis Antetokounmpo: “Do you get a promotion every year in your job? No, right? So, every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work toward something — toward a goal. Maybe it’s to get a promotion, to provide for your family, to build a house for them, to take care of your parents. You work toward a goal. It’s not a failure. It’s steps to success. I don’t want to make it personal. There are always steps to it. Michael Jordan played fifteen years. Won six championships. The other nine years — was that a failure?”

I’ll share the full transcript below, but it’s a masterclass in perspective and composure, and I believe it’s relevant to how we think about and evaluate our work. No matter what you do or where you work, Giannis’s comments can offer valuable insights.

This might seem obvious, but as a reminder, Giannis isn’t the only person on the court or even working for the Milwaukee Bucks. In fact, about 663 people (including Giannis) are employed by the team, according to a simple web search. We like to think of the individual, like the lone artist, inventor, or athlete, but for most of us, our work contributes to something bigger — a group effort, just like Giannis’s. The museum isn’t the sole toil of one individual, be it the director, or anyone. Nor is an exhibition the work of a single curator; it’s the result of the entire organization, from the director down to the staff member checking tickets, cleaning the floors, and stocking the bathrooms. And work isn’t easily measured by successes or failures, despite our eagerness to do so.

Despite our obsession with success, failure has its own fans and apparently visitors. In the summer of 2016, psychologist Samuel West was vacationing in Zagreb, Croatia, where he visited the Museum of Broken Relationships. This led him to have his own failure-based epiphany: “I just thought: Woah, if they can do that, then I should open the Museum of Failure. It was kind of an eureka moment,” as shared in a 2017 Smithsonian Magazine article. A year later, West would open his own museum in Helsingborg, Sweden, where visitors could celebrate iconic and not-so-iconic failures. Failures, as designated by the museum, would include the Bic for Her pens, Amazon Fire Phone, Google Glass, Sony Betamax, and Coke II. But like its theme, the Museum of Failure is itself a failure. The site lists thirteen global locations, including Washington, DC, which, being about failures, has since shuttered all of them.

If the Museum of Failure is, or was, for the public, then the annual Mistakes Were Made session, occurring each year at the American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting, is for the museum field. The Annual Conference, the largest gathering of museum-folk each year, descends on a different American city each year. It’s often the Mistakes Were Made session that’s a conference favorite, a highly attended, standing-room-only session. With each Mistake that’s shared, serving as an act of kindness and devotion to the field itself and those who call museums their place of work. Museums, by and large, are tax-exempt, 501(C)(3) organizations, “commonly referred to as charitable organizations” according to the IRS. This matters, as museums, like all nonprofits, are in the business of storytelling, sharing their successes, and highlighting their impact. Sharing stories of projects that went awry, programs that flopped, and initiatives that fizzled is anything but the norm. Why would they be, when as charitable organizations, we’re dependent on donor dollars? And donors, of course, want to give to charities that can do the most good. Which is why the Mistakes Were Made session is so important; without those stories, the field can’t grow.

Our organizations are best suited to tell the big stories, such as the opening of a new gallery, funding for new positions, or major research and initiatives. These are the programs and activities that naturally rely on the skills and services of our communications departments and teams. Our challenge lies in sharing smaller stories, the micro-innovations that feel significant to us but rarely get news coverage. We tend to see them as internal updates rather than stories worth celebrating.

This is another benefit of the ‘Mistakes Were Made’ session, as it peels back the process and opens the hood for learning. The examples serve as a reminder of how work is accomplished and how progress in any field is methodical—step by step, through the good days and the bad.

Working not for so-called successes or failures, but for the sake of progress. For learning. For incremental improvements.

Special thanks to Keira Hamilton for her editorial insights and review.

Explore More

April 27, 2023, transcript of a question and answer between reporter Eric Nehm and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Reporter, Eric Nehm: “Do you view this season as a failure?”

Giannis Antetokounmpo: “Oh my god. You asked me the same question last year, Eric … okay?”

“Do you get a promotion every year in your job? No, right? So every year you work is a failure? Yes or no? No.”

“Every year you work, you work toward something — toward a goal. Maybe it’s to get a promotion, to provide for your family, to build a house for them, to take care of your parents. You work toward a goal. It’s not a failure. It’s steps to success.”

“I don’t want to make it personal. There are always steps to it. Michael Jordan played fifteen years. Won six championships. The other nine years — was that a failure? That’s what you’re telling me? I’m asking you a question, yes or no? Exactly. So why you ask me that question? It’s the wrong question.”

“There’s no failure in sports. There are good days, bad days. Some days you’re able to be successful, some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. And that’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Sometimes other people are going to win. This year somebody else is going to win. Simple as that.”

“We’re going to come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better. Not have ten days straight playing bad basketball. And hopefully we can win a championship.”

“So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 that we didn’t win a championship — was that 50 years of failure? No, it was not. It was steps to it. We were able to win one, and hopefully we’re able to win another one.”

“Because you asked me the same question last year. I wasn’t in the right mindspace to answer the question back, but I remembered it.”

“So I’m not trying to make it personal. I don’t mean to single you out. I just wanted to be clear.”

Thank you for reading. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn and Patron View for more.