How failure leads to success

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Bikky Khosla | 14 Aug, 2012
Failure is the pillar of success, as the saying goes. There is no dearth of stories about how great people made mistakes to become successful later. But failure doesn't lead to success automatically, only learning from mistakes does. In the world of business, the same rule applies. Prior business failure enhances later entrepreneurial performance only when failure offers insights -- we learn from them.

Small businesses usually face a greater risk of failure than large businesses do, and they need to be extra careful about handling failure - be it small or grand - to reduce the risk of repeating the mistakes again. First of all, what I think the most important is to acknowledge the failure. This may sound simple, but it's quite difficult for many to do. Admitting failure is something that many people don't like to do, and as a result they are doomed to repeat it. In contrast, owning the mistake is the key factor in learning from failures.

Blaming others and not looking for the cause is another major deterrent to handling setback effectively. Who is to blame? -- while this naturally comes to our mind when something goes wrong, assigning blames takes our attention away from seeking solution. Of course, someone may commit a stupid blunder, but more often than not the cause may lie somewhere else, like in some bureaucratic bungle or lack of proper training. As an entrepreneur, you should never miss the broader picture.

Besides -- particularly as far as small and medium enterprises are concerned -- I think we should never miss the opportunity to learn from mistakes of others. It is easier for large businesses to afford failure, but small-business owners don't have that luxury as failure could take a bigger toll on them, sometimes not even leaving a chance for recovery. In addition, SMEs should always start lean while trying new things so that financial losses from a failure could be kept as minimal as possible.

However, having said that, I am not attempting to deny the very nature of failure -- its inevitability. Nobody likes to fail, yet we all have to face it sometime. And if you are a small business or a start-up, you are more exposed to it due to your inexperience as well as your need to experiment new things. That's why you must prepare yourself, and know how you will deal with failure and turn it into a learning experience. Rest assured, you will bounce back.