Failure in business is often due to our individual and personal character flaws. You see! Humans are largely prone to make wrong assumptions, poor assessment and misjudgements or yield to character flaws such as lack of focus and arrogance which leads to poor productivity in business. Other common problems are negativity, anger, lack of motivation or even emotional distress.
Failing is just part of normal life and there is no reason to be alarmed about it. Just like a baby tries to make its first step in learning how to walk, we also fall from time to time. But the manner we choose to approach failure can lead to even greater failures or to greater heights of success. So since failure is expected to happen from time to time, there is no reason to get depressed when they do come. Knowing this, it doesn’t call for celebration or depression but an awareness that occasionally failure is inevitable to even the most successful people.
Mistakes in business such as poor planning or procrastination are fixable and the following four steps are useful in providing in fixing and ensuring that they are not repeated.
- Recognise the mistake The very first step to fixing your failure is to, first of all, recognise it and the damage it does to our business. This takes a significant depth of reflection. Procrastination, for instance, is a major stumbling block to business success that it makes one to extend a task till there is no much time left to complete the task properly which invariably affects the quality of the finished work as a result. Thus, acknowledging fully the damage procrastination causes to your business’ profitability will bring about an awareness of a problem standing in the way of business success and begins to fast track a suitable approach to tackling it.
- Take responsibility for small mistakes We can avoid failure on a large scale by taking responsibility for our small mistakes and ensuring that they do not repeat themselves. Spending much time being introspective rather than going into denial caused by the embarrassment of failing will make you watchful, owning up to our mistake and becoming cognizant of them. Many new businesses fail because entrepreneurs and the likes have multiple business failures and do not own up to it but rather blame it on circumstance or external factors that inhibit the business progress. But note that when challenges do come it is our ability to respond to it appropriately that matter.
- Admit the mistake to yourself and to others The amazing idea behind this is that as long as others in our lives are aware of our problems and mistakes, they will be able to motivate us against making them. Admitting your issues to those around you will make it more difficult to continue in the line of such mistakes
- Make a promise to yourself and keep it This brings you to the defining moment for change! This can take the form of a simple verbal pronouncement or a personally written agreement to yourself, a spouse or a close friend, life coach or mentor or even God; to change your thinking and behaviour and resolve to not follow such erroneous way of thinking. For that to happen, maintain a daily or at least once in a week or semiweekly assessment of yourself to curtail character flaws. This will reconstruct positive mindsets, behaviours and actions for productivity and reinforcement. Make an audit of the business as you would do an assessment of yourself. Since personal mistakes and character flaws affect business failures assessing yourself and your business can be done simultaneously to avoid repeating previous errors.
Bottom Line Failure allows individuals to reach even greater heights. Beneath each failure there is something positive of which to others may be perceived as a dead end, but is more of a potential to future success. Know that all successful businesses at some point have been at some stages of failure which they overcame.
Therefore, failure in a clear sense is more like a sign post, a correctional device that leads us to the path of success. Like Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘he, who makes no mistakes, makes no progress.’ All you need to do is to recognise the mistake and its damage, take responsibility, admit it to yourself and others and promise never again!
While you might not eliminate mistakes completely, the more you do, the closer you get to sustained success.
The primary rule in life is never, ever, ever give up! Have faith in a brighter future.
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Nice insightful article..making a promise to yourself and keeping it seems to be the hardest of the lot..its like breaking a bad habit..can be hard sometimes..solid article nevertheless.