Can you do good work and fail? Yes.

Can you do good work and be bad? No.

If you wake up in the morning and are working to achieve your goals that day, you are doing good work. That could mean chipping away at a large goal or achieving something small.

If you sit at your desk but aren’t sure what to do, that’s also good work. The important thing is that you show up and are trying.

It’s possible that the outcome of your work is not what you wished. Perhaps you didn’t connect with someone like you expected to. Your customers didn’t respond to your offer like you anticipated they would. The board members or the presentation group didn’t understand your ideas they way you thought they would. That is disappointing. But it’s not bad work.

What does it mean to do good work? Show up, regroup, try again and learn from both your successes and your failures.