failure

There are 3 posts tagged failure.

In Business – Don’t Take Care, Take a Chance

As I have written in some of my previous articles, what distinguishes great people and organizations is not how they succeed, but how they fail. Great organizations (especially dealing with innovation) are about taking risks to do things that haven’t been done before. And like with any experiment – you know there are going to be more failures than successes. That is the definition of innovation. If the odds were higher and success was almost certain in every one of two cases or so, every Tom, Dick and Harry would be doing it.

Take Intelligent Risks
We live in a world of risks, and we live in a world of failure. Entire industries like venture capital, portfolio management and insurance work on the model of taking intelligent bets and risks, and making the few big wins count more than the numerous failures. So rather than eliminating risks, we should take intelligent risks and learn to eliminate the uncertainties. Because without risks, there is no moving ahead.

Look Far Ahead – The Bigger Perspective
When you look at the big picture you will realize that when you fail you are not finished. Failure doesn’t mean a full stop, it just means a temporary barrier on your way to wherever your vision is going to take you. Failures build our character amid immense challenges, and that is an incredible muscle to build for tough times. Over the period of a long journey, the definition of failure changes for most people, and we start becoming much less scared of it.

Be Ok with the Fear of Failure
What is lacking in the current environment is the concept of constructive failure, by which I mean the ability of doing things and failing, then learning from the mistakes and iterating until you reach the milestone of success. Failures can by compared to the lighting lamps on the way to every success story. Being able to take failure as an asset is a unique trait. When you really learn is when you are confronted with failure.

Dont Live Life, Be Alive
Many people say you can learn from the failure of others, but there is only limited knowledge and experience you can gain from reading books and listening to others. You can’t relive the experience of falling from a bike by reading about it. So in terms of failure, if we ‘really’ want to learn the lessons and want our time and money’s worth from failure, they better be our own. There are some experiences which must be felt if you have to learn the lessons with them, and there are no short cuts.
Infact, most of the success stories we know today are also stories of many more failures which are never highlighted by the media. To give a few examples, Henry Ford failed in five businesses before starting the Ford Motor Company and Soichiro Honda was turned down by Toyota for a job and was jobless for some time before he started making his own scooters at home. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for a “lack of imagination” before he started Disney. To stress the point that innovation in business is similar to experiments by scientists, we have the examples of Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers. We will have examples in art, politics and sports too of such people, and some names that come to mind are Winston Churchill, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, JK Rowling, Elvis Presley and Michael Jordan.

8 More Lessons from SaleRaja and other start-ups I have been associated with

Recently I wrote about some of the important lessons I learned after working with SaleRaja and other startups. I was pondering over this article and I realized I can think of many more points which I can write about. So below are 8 more lessons which I came up after reflecting on those days spend building some amazing products with SaleRaja, InfoEdge and Jivox.

8. Spend wisely

As a startup your balance sheet will be in the red in the first few years as you build the infrastructure, teams and systems for the future. Hence it is very important to monitor and control what you spend and for what purpose. Even if you have secured funding, you never know which way the economy turns in the future. The point is to always have cash in the bank to act as a cushion in tough times.

9. Networking

Big corporations are people independent, i.e. , they never depend heavily on any one or a few people for their business to survive. It is because of this that they can hire in big numbers, and even fire people easily in hard times. In startups though, the commitment to the company by employees is very important. Similarly, each employee is very critical to the company and it can’t afford losing an employee as it might impact their business. Due to this, the hiring in startups (at least the initial hirings) normally happen through networking and personal contacts as trust in the employee – employer relationship is very critical for startups. And networking is not only useful in hiring but in other business aspects too.

Beginning is Half Done

Beginning is Half Done

10. Have Fun Along the Way

I have always believed in the idea that if we love what we do, it is not work but more like play. And while doing different tasks during a typical day, it is very important to have fun and not get too serious. A team of people working who smile and have fun with each other in a casual atmosphere will always have more productivity. So in your team, play some games, pull somebody’s leg, take out time for discussions other than work, or whatever, but don’t miss to have FUN. This might be an exaggeration, but see what happened during a night out in my first job.

11. Do everything – customer service to sales to coding

As a co-founder or starting member of a startup, you should try to do everything to get a pulse of the whole business. That would mean doing coding with your engineers, being involved with your marketing team, going out on sales calls with your sales team and also hearing customer complaints and feedback. This will keep you well informed of what is happening in the whole ecosystem around your business and will help you make better decisions.

12. Do your Business Ethically

It is important to follow both the legal and ethical laws of the land where you operate your business. Being ethical will help you in fostering a long term relationship with your customers. Any success that is attained without the foundation of ethics is bound to be short lived, as lies and scams tend to come out sooner or later. The primary objective of business is not just to maximize profits, but it is also to be a responsible citizen in a just society and working in a way that benefits all its stakeholders.

13. Make Mistakes, but Don’t Repeat

It is only human to make mistakes, and as you start a new business, you will also make few. But the important lesson here is to not keep repeating them. We must take enough risks for our business to grow, but also be wise enough to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. We just need to make ‘new and better‘ mistakes going into the future. As for me, I am really glad for the mistakes I have made.

14. Mature with Time, but Don’t Grow up..

As our business grows and we reap success, we grow more mature and this maturity starts reflecting in our daily lives as well as our business decisions. But as a startup, it is very important not to loose what makes you special in the first place. It is always good to be a little crazy, keep having fun along the way and not get too serious. It is ok to risk, and it is ok to fail.

15. Don’t accept Failure as an Option

One of the most important word you have to stop listening when starting something new is ‘NO‘. So no matter what, in the face of a NOs, keep on finding new ways of achieving the objective, but never give up. Try out a lot of things, and go with the things that work. When things are not going well, take a break, do something which inspires you, but after that, get back to it with relentless persistence. Remember, failure is not an option.

Five lessons I have learned from failure

We all are human beings, we plan new things, we try them out, sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail. Although we always want to succeed and see failure as something which was ‘not expected‘ to happen, failures are inevitable along the way. And more often not, failures teach us more than any success can. Failure is often related with negative emotions. I want to challenge that negativity. Failures have taught me a lot and brought me where I am today. Even me writing this blog post is the result of failed attempt to do so in the past. Let me list down the five most important lessons I have learned from failure :-

1. Nobody is Special
If you think you are extra-talented, or very hard working and dedicated, it doesn’t matter. YOU WILL FAIL. Nobody is a guaranteed winner. We all are human, and like all humans, we will make mistakes too. So if we have any sense of being superior, better than others in skills or knowledge, we should give that up now before life hits us with reality. The only person who does not fail is the one who never tries anything. Many venture capitalists, when looking for a business to invest into, look for leaders who have started and failed before, because they know they are more likely to succeed in the future.

2. Nobody can do everything perfectly
No matter how much multi-tasking we can do or in however many fields we are an expert, we can’t do everything perfectly all the time. There is a saying that an expert is merely someone who has failed more than anyone else in that field. Michael Jordan, considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, says that he has succeeded because of his constant failure. He lost almost 300 games and missed over 9000 shots, which is more than an average NBA player even plays in. He says he has used failure as motivation for his success. So no matter how good we are, we will need help from others to do what we want to do.

One of my favorite quotes about life

One of my favorite quotes about life

3. Plan for the worst case scenario
When taking upon something, I have learned that we must always prepare for the worst case scenario. What I mean is we should always have a Plan B and Plan C ready in case of when Plan A doesn’t work. And more often than not, you will need these backup plans. There is no point wondering over why Plan A did not work out as expected. It is more wise to learn our lessons from it, and move on to Plan B. The famous author Denis Waitley once said “Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.” That says it all!

4. No matter how successful in the past, we will fail again
When we taste success, our self confidence increases and we move ahead with more ambitious plans. At a time when everything has been going well and successes have been coming along on the way, a failure can be even more devastating. It can leave us in the ‘This can’t happen to me‘ state very easily as we were, more than ever, expecting a success now. The point is no matter how successful you have been in the past, you will fail again in the future. That is life, because successes don’t lead you to more successes, but failures do. Even the best of businessmen fail continuously as they expand their businesses. The only difference is that they welcome the failures and see them as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, in their way.

5. Failures are good, they lead to success
It might seem very ironical, but failures are good. Let me repeat again, Failures are Good. The only thing important is how we perceive it. There is a huge difference when a man says to himself, “I have failed three times“, to when he says, “I am a failure“. For it is said that failure is not the falling down, but the staying down. Thomas Edison, considered the greatest inventor of his time, kept on failing but he continued to try and try and try. He tried so many times that it took him 10,000 attempts to invent the light bulb. But we can see the positive outlook we should have towards failure when he said, ‘I have not failed. I have just found 9,999 ways that do not work.’

So let us try. Then try again. Then fail again. Fail better. Fail forward.. towards success!!