Failure Sucks!!!!
To me, the only failure is the failure to not try and dream and dare. And I deeply feel that the greatest risk you will ever take in your life is if you never take a risk. -- Robin Sharma
Or does it? Why do so many small businesses fail? Why are there so many stories about failure? Do we look for failure?
When I look back at the last ten years of being an entrepreneur, I have failed miserably a number of times. But guess what? I am still here. :-)
I recently read an article from Harvard Business School's, Working Knowledge blog about Why Companies Fail-- and How Their Founders Can Bounce Back. The article does a great job of illustrating how entrepreneurs should view failure as a potential for improvement.
The statistics are disheartening no matter how an entrepreneur defines failure. If failure means liquidating all assets, with investors losing most or all the money they put into the company, then the failure rate for start-ups is 30 to 40 percent, according to Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School who has held top executive positions at some eight technology-based start-ups. If failure refers to failing to see the projected return on investment, then the failure rate is 70 to 80 percent. And if failure is defined as declaring a projection and then falling short of meeting it, then the failure rate is a whopping 90 to 95 percent.
"Very few companies achieve their initial projections," says Ghosh. "Failure is the norm."
Well, now that really sucks!!! :-) However, it really depends on how you look at all this. As Ghosh mentions in his article, start-ups "believe they can predict the future, rather than try to create a future with their customers". Maybe when starting something we shouldn't set goals or targets, but create something that we are passionate about that really fills a void that is needed by a specific group of individuals out there? Would that work? Maybe.
I have talked about this before in a previous post, where the best goal is no goal. In the post I refer to an amazing post written by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Leo does a great job of explaining how beneficial and exhilrating this can be if you can alter your process slightly and try this.
Here’s the secret: the problem isn’t you, it’s the system! Goals as a system are set up for failure. -- Leo Babauta
It does all sound crazy, however, maybe it's worth a shot. Maybe we just need to change our perception of failure and do things we really love doing, that will help make peoples lives better. Or as Ghosh says,
Revising expectations
Ghosh notes that venture capitalists could help mitigate personal failures by allowing for the expectation of company growing pains. He points out that a baseball player with a .350 average is considered to be a success, even though he has a .650 failure rate. But in entrepreneurial management, there's a tendency to see things in black and white, rather than looking at the whole picture.
What do you think about failure?
Always remember: the journey is all. The destination is beside the point.
‘A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~Lao Tzu
