There are probably few things an entrepreneur finds more disheartening than the thought of failure. Success is the ultimate goal of every business, and failure, its antithesis, is to be avoided at all costs.
However, today many business and management experts tell us that failure has been given a bad rap. Too many managers in their attempt to avoid failure are instead stagnating and preventing success.
Running a business is like riding a bicycle. If you don’t keep peddling, you’re going to fall over. Change and innovation are what keep a business moving forward. It’s the only way to stay competitive and successful.
But every innovative idea is not always the right idea. The result is often failure.
An entrepreneur must constantly create systems that improve efficiency and increase profits. In short, there’s always a better way to get the job done, and it is the manager’s job to find that way.
Author and business expert, Tom Peters, feels managers need more failure, not less. He states that failure is just a necessary stop (and a brief one) on the way to getting it right. The failure is not important and should not be dwelled upon. It’s the effort – the attempt and what you have learned from it – that deserves the attention.
“There are an almost irreducible number of failures associated with launching anything new. For heaven’s sake, hurry up and get them over with!
“The goal is to be more tolerant of slip-ups. Talk it up. Laugh about it. Go on,” writes Peters in his book Thriving on Chaos.
It’s impossible to move forward when you’re standing still. When a manger stops making changes and looking for ways to improve the business because he doesn’t want to fail, he’s making the most costly mistake of all.
Failure is not to be avoided, but to be accepted as an important and necessary part of business and life.
As author William Strong said, “The only time you don’t fail is that last time you tried something and it worked.”
Never be so afraid of being wrong that you fail to give yourself the opportunity of being better.
Denise Lloyd
Publisher
