By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist™
Success and failure…it’s a matter of perspectives. Out of every 10 transactions in our lives, five will be unqualified successes. One will be a failure. Two will depend upon the circumstances. If approached responsibly, they will become successful. If approached irresponsibly, they will turn into failures. Two will either be successful or will fail, based strictly upon the person’s attitude.
A 90% success rate for a person with a good attitude and responsible behavior is unbeatable. There is no such thing as perfection. Continuous quality improvement means that we benchmark accomplishments and set the next reach a little further.
Throughout our lives, we search for activities, people, and meaning. We venture down roads where we find success. Other activities bring us failure from which we learn even more what to do to achieve success the next time. We learn three times more from failure than from success. The longer that success takes to attain has a direct relationship to how long we will hold onto it.
7 Degrees of Failure…Plateaus in the Learning Curve
- Education-Growth—Didn’t know any better. Made some dumb mistakes based upon incorrect assumptions, insufficient information, or lack of sophistication to “see beyond the obvious.” Beginning to learn better approaches by analyzing the wrong ways of doing things.
- Evolution—Tried some things that worked and some that didn’t work. Beginning to understand that things do not fail without a reason or cause. Learns constructively from trial and error. Visualizing patterns of failure as barriers to success.
- Experience Gathering—Circumstances within and outside your control caused the projects to fail. Learns which external factors to trust and which cannot be controlled. The importance of research, due-diligence, and marketplace understanding surface.
- Grooming—The team lets you down. Learns what you are capable of doing. Learns who to work with and in which capacities. Success-failure is a function of seizing-creating your own opportunities. No individual or organization can have success without experiencing and learning from failures.
- Seasoning—Understands outcomes before they transpire and the myriad of failure-producing factors. Most people and organizations fail due to never having control over certain ingredients, improper planning, and the inability to change.
- Meaningful Contributions—Attitude is everything, affecting the approach to problems. Develops attitudes, behaviors, and skills as the motivator to create bigger successes.
- Body of Knowledge—Develops profound insights and life-long perspectives into the teachings of success and failure (learning three times more from failures than success).
7 Benefits of Success Stemming from Failure
- Immediate Feedback—It is far better to succeed than fail. Not knowing where you’re going or how you’re doing causes you to make many more mistakes.
- Starting Over—Without being hampered by systems/processes that haven’t worked, you can create as you go. After you’ve done it, you feel richer for the experience.
- Learn What Not to Do Next Time—Gives you a clear frame of reference, assuming that you understand factors behind the failure rather than blame someone else.
- How the Pendulum Swings—One succeeds much more than one fails. By studying swings of the pendulum (likelihoods of failures), one better understands their progress.
- Failures Make the Best Case Studies—Case studies of success and failure form the basis for planning, improvement, training, and other business practices.
- Lessons Learned But Not Soon Forgotten—One succeeds five to nine times more often than one fails (depending upon the individual’s attitude, resources, and insights).
- Qualities of Achievements—The more sophisticated the understanding of failures and their factors, the more successful in business and life one will be.
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Hank Moore has advised over 5,000 client organizations including public sector agencies, small businesses, non-profit organizations, and 100 of the Fortune 500. Visit his website at www.hankmoore.com or contact Hank by phone at 713-668-0664 or by email at [email protected].
