Success and Failure: Two Sides of the Same Coin
31862
Business > Management
May 24, 2007
Breezotoo
Success and Failure: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Failure is Great! You are probably asking yourself what could be good about failing. Failing means, well essentially, that you failed, that you did not achieve the results you wanted and that things did not turn out as you hoped. What could be good about that? The advantage is that you now know one way not to do something. And this is as useful as knowing one way of how to do something. As Thomas Edison said, -Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do in the first place doesn't mean it's useless.... Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.... - Failure is a learning opportunity, but only if you let it be. More often than not failure is seen as something that should be hidden and avoided and never admitted to. How often in your company do you think people make the same mistakes over and over again because no one ever admits to the mistake or examines why the mistake was made. Would it not be more cost effective and time effective if when a mistake is initially made that it results in a learning opportunity? Each time something does not go according to plan think about you could do next time to get the results you want? What was missing? What needs to be added? What needs to change? Once the answers to the questions have been thoroughly explored with an open mind and no assumptions, then take those learnings and apply them to the future. Every company should continually strive to learn and improve. Just because a particular method works does not mean it is the best one. Strive to improve. Be prepared to fail and learn; it is the only way forward. Celebrate Successes The opposite side of the same coin is success. Just as it is important to analyze your failures and learn from them so it is also important that you celebrate your successes and repeat them. Every year we strive to do be better and be more successful at what we do. Often, however, we only remember successes that are so large that they hit us right in the face, when they are so large that everyone else congratulates you. We remember landing a $100 million dollar account or tripling our profits from the year before or being awarded some Presidential award. While these are amazing successes that you should definitely celebrate and tell the world about they are not the kind of successes that most of us can hope to achieve. The rest of us need to be happy with the smaller more mundane successes. Successes like generating a profit in our business, getting the client we have been trying to land or simply being thanked by one of our clients for a job well done. Although these may seem like small successes, lots of small successes like these add up to a successful business, motivated staff and a happy you. Now what if you could repeat each of your small successes so that you could achieve them on a monthly or weekly basis -would that not spell big success for your business? To achieve that big success you therefore need to celebrate each of your small successes. You need to remember each of them, examine them and find a way of repeating them. Sit down now and think, over the last year, what you did well. Think about what you succeeded in doing, what someone thanked you for, and, where you were appreciated. Create a list of your successes no matter how small, examine them to find a way that you could repeat them. What was the essence of the success that would make it repeatable? Break the success into small process steps, think about everything that you did to get to the end point of success. Not just the big steps, think about each little step that was taken. It is often not the big steps that determine a success, it is the little things. Maybe you wrote a client a thank you letter, or you called a client to see how they were doing. Maybe you referred a client to someone else to solve a problem that you could not. You could also have rewarded your staff or done something out of the ordinary for them to make them perform above and beyond. Think about each success in great detail. You should now be able to see where you did something differently to achieve the successful result. Your next step is to put together a plan on how you are going to repeat your past successes. Your plan should include each of those necessary steps that resulted in the success. By understanding and planning for your successes you will be able to repeat them and eventually be able to achieve the large success of a successful business or department. Plan for success, learn from failures.
By President of Arcturus Advisors. Please visit their website at http://www.arcturusadvisors.com. Arcturus Advisors works with business leaders to close the gap between great strategies and mediocre results. We use a process to get businesses to focus on a shared vision and agree on how to achieve results that far exceed individual contribution.
send email to Breezotoo
Write a Review
Add to My Favorite
Refer it to Friend
Report Article
Other links owned by this user
Developing a reporting structure is often a problem for organizations large and small! It's really simple.
Category:
A business has a lifespan that is severely reduced if it doesn't learn how to succeed. Much like a child if it did not learn as it developed what would it end up like after a few years. How's your business developing? Is it developing as a Learning Organi
Category:
Goal setting is over written about and under used, it has beens hyped by folk who have never set their own plans or made any achievements of their own! What is your excuse.
Category:
Plan for success; it is about setting a direction and working towards it. Getting your thoughts down on paper helps you to articulate your success.
Category:
A simple discussion of how to determine a businesses break-even point
Category:
This article highlights the functional silos management lives in and the problems it can cause. Every manager comes to the table with many years of experience and study behind them. They come with a thorough understanding of their role in the company but
Category:
This is not about time management this is about focus. Do what gets results not what fits in the top right hand box in your Covey chart.
Category:
Business moves in mysterious way, subtle changes may become evident radical changes may not be noticed before they affect our business. A new technology could ruin an established business. Can you pick up these radical shifts? Do you even look for them? D
Category:
It is all about how you communicate with your team that determines their involvement - or lack of it! We need more dialog and less discussion.
Category:
Does you business learn from it's mistakes. Like learning to walk or ride a bike we fall a few times but we learn. Does you business encourage this approach or penalize it?
Category:
Other links at Business > Management
Six Sigma process improvement projects rely heavily on the use of scientific tools and techniques, but that is often not enough to ensure the success of such projects, because there is always a human angle involved - such as the needs and expectations of
Category:
We have all heard it said, There is room for improvement. Leadership is no exception. Effectiveness of knowledge in leadership is a key component.
Category:
This article discussed how to use real estate management techniques to maximizes your real estate biz to the next level.
Category:
Business coaches posses the ability to transform a regular team into a high-performance team. Over the years, the field of business coaching has advanced and many groundbreaking techniques have been tried.
Category:
Site Sponsor
Directory Statistics
Articles: 68285
Categories: 501
Yahoo Entertainment
