Have a dream, believe in it & work towards it and it will happen, well this is the
mantra we all chant in our mind while we initiate our journey to pursue our
ambitions.But have any one of you ever thought , how you will manage the situation if things won’t happen as we dreamt.
Managing failure is one of the most important feature an entrepreneur should possess, becuase the more you fail the more are the chances of attaining a huge success. Becuase each time you fail, you learn a lot of things which no business school will teach nor any mentor can advice. But if you don’t manage your failure, one may never get back to entreprenuership ever in your life.
Now how does one manage his/her failure . Well for this i believe one should foresee the possiblity of the same much in advance like the way you foresee your profits or success ( This could be like how you will pay back Tom, Dick and Harry who had lended me 1 lakh each to start the business or how you will face uncle Sam who warned you thousand times not to venture out into the business ). You should have a strategy in place for meeting people, your clients , partners , angry customers , investors if your business flops. I think such a strategy can reduce the magnitude of your failure a li’l bit so that may be after coming to terms with tragedy, you can get back and try your luck again may be after a small gap.
Again such a strategy can also help you foresee certain risks which you might not otherwise have thought off . This will also increase the level of confidence among probable investors about you and your company.
Entreprenueship is all about risks, but it doesnt mean that you should go for blind risks thinking that you will never fail.
Anyways would like to know your thoughts on the same!
- Startups , Students and Universities ! - June 17, 2008
- Is locationa constraint for start ups ? - March 8, 2008
- Ever dreamt about managing failures! - March 6, 2008
Hello Anish – Been trying to trace you down for some time. Give me a call or shoot in a mail – i dont have any of your personal ids.
Hope things are cool
Regards…Sanjay
You don’t “manage†failure; you either run away from it or are wiser by experience.
In the former camp, you take deviation and swear never to travel down that road again. Good for you. In the latter camp, you look back and survey the wreck. You begin to look where you slipped and fell. You recount everything. Why and where exactly did I go wrong? You figure that out. What am I left with? A shattered dream, some financial liabilities and a bruised pride that interprets every stare and grin at you as “here comes the loser.†You are convinced that everyone around is successful and happy and hence have a sanction to deride and judge you. Big mistake.
The denouement could be something like this – Dreams get rebuilt; financial liabilities can be settled; bruised pride heals over time. That leaves the derisive stares and grins. Well, that will go on for sometime because misery loves company – larger the tribe the better. In fact, a lot of them that stare you down would be in much deeper mess. That’s their way of masking their own grief. But with one difference – your flight didn’t take off while they never hit the runway.
For a few weeks or even months this could be pretty much it. Then you mature and realize I’m Ok and you’re not. An insular coat envelopes your mind and suddenly external attitudes no longer matter to you. That’s when the pointed stares begin to recede as they reckon it makes no difference to you.
But resist that urge to wallow in self-pity. It slips in a false sense of reprieve that robs you of your motivation to get up and go again. You must keep feeling the sense of loss deep inside you and use that vengeful spite to drive future success.
Next time, remember to stock up well before you start cooking the meal.
Nice topic…..i have a different view for you.
What is failure?……failure is more related to expectation of results…….u expect something and u do’nt get it.
But what is untouched in the whole scenario……..what was the intention and passion to do it?……i feel form follows function(Famous architecture saying) as well as intention follows result. If you do things for money money and money……u will touch the corner stone soon……but if u work for love of work….joy……joy which is beyond any joy……..then it is different world……..successful or unsuccessful become unimportant……..it is all about PASSION PASSION and PASSION….nothing to do with measurement scales. you focus on failure or success…which is measure able scales……then u can’t focus on real work.
I hope u like my feedback?
On the lighter side though I remembered the Disaster Management term that echoed in every media show, talk, debate post Mumbai flooding.
We tend to learn from our past experience. An inquisitive child which burns its hand by playing with fire for the first time learns the hard way a permanent learning for rest of its life.
In every stage of our life we learn a lot from past experiences and first experience. I have personally learnt how to deal with intermediaries and potential investors when I met many of them.
Everytime I failed in my pitch (got a negative response) I always tried to value their feedback and see how I should pitch better next time. Even to this day I must say I am learning in every interaction.
The success or failure is dependent on many factors that are not in your control and many factors that are under your control.You can only foresee and mitigate future failures by keeping your eyes and ears open. You factor all that you have experienced in the past, observed or seen in making a decision and 9 out of ten times you will be right. But there is that 10% chance of you being unlucky and still fail it is not because luck did not favour you, it is because you missed out on a factor which becomes your learning for your next attempt.
Failure management is not a separate discipline but a continuous process of learning and unlearning in our lives. The more we internalize this process, the better will be our success ratio in whtever we do.