Small Business Today Magazine APR 2014 MONTGOMERY ROTH | Page 17
EDITORIALFEATURE
The Fine Art of Failure
Benefiting from Mistakes
to Assure Success
By Hank Moore, Corporate Strategist™
S
do not fail without a reason or cause.
Learns constructively from trial and
error. Visualizing patterns of failure as
barriers to success.
3. 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.
A 90% success rate for a person with
a good attitude and responsible behavior 4. Grooming---The team lets you down.
Learns what you are capable of dois unbeatable. There is no such thing as
ing. Learns who to work with and
perfection. Continuous quality improvein which capacities. Success-failure
ment means that we benchmark accomis a function of seizing-creating your
plishments and set the next reach a little
own opportunities. No individual or
further.
organization can have success without experiencing and learning from
Throughout our lives, we search for acfailures.
tivities, people, and meaning. We venture
outcomes
down roads where we find success. Oth- 5. Seasoning---Understands
before they transpire and the myrier activities bring us failure from which we
ad of failure-producing factors. Most
learn even more what to do to achieve
people and organizations fail due to
success the next time. We learn three
never having control over certain intimes more from failure than from success.
gredients, improper planning, and the
The longer that success takes to attain has
inability to change.
a direct relationship to how long we will
6. Meaningful Contributions---Attitude is evhold onto it.
erything, affecting the approach to
problems. Develops attitudes, behav7 Degrees of Failure...
iors, and skills as the motivator to crePlateaus in the Learning Curve
ate bigger successes.
1. Education-Growth---Didn’t know any better. Made some dumb mistakes based 7. Body of Knowledge---Develops profound
insights and life-long perspectives into
upon incorrect assumptions, insuffithe teachings of success and failure
cient information, or lack of sophisti(learning three times more from failcation to “see beyond the obvious.”
ures than success).
Beginning to learn better approaches
by analyzing the wrong ways of doing
things.
7 Benefits of Success
2. Evolution---Tried some things that Stemming from Failure
worked and some that didn’t work. 1. Immediate Feedback---It is far better to
Beginning to understand that things
succeed than fail. Not knowing where
uccess 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.
you’re going or how you’re doing causes you to make many more mistakes.
2. 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.
3. Learn What Not to Do Next Time---Gives you
a clear frame of reference, assuming
that you understand factors behind
t H