The path to any kind of success always passes through error. This may seem contradictory and yet it is a truth that we normally ignore, often because of social prejudice.
Especially in the business world, success in an initiative has often required failure of previous attempts. Never mind! We had to make mistakes in order to learn from our mistakes.
This is so because the business adventure is not a Science. It is far from being an activity in which results can be calculated and predicted. No matter how much they try to establish models or methodologies, the success of any business initiative can never be guaranteed. Uncertainty will always remain there, at the very core of business activity.
Why does the company always have uncertainty and risk associated with it? There is a very direct answer to this question: because developing a company is fundamentally based on dealing with people… and people are unpredictable.
The topic that companies are their people is a statement that has profound consequences. When we are going to negotiate with the bank to give us a credit policy, we are actually talking to the branch director, who is a person with first and last names, with his criteria and prejudices. And the success of the operation will depend on how we can transmit to you (person to person) sufficient confidence in our business project and our ability to carry it out. Likewise, when we go to visit a customer to offer a service, we will sell it to them if we get them to trust us as a person.
Our suppliers must also have this same trust to allow us to pay them a couple of months after they have served us. In the same way, we have to guide and motivate the people who work with us to do it optimally and obviously, personal treatment counts a lot in this.
In this sense, a human activity that is based above all on working with people's values, sensitivities and needs, is not an exact science, nor a technique. It is much more like an Art. And therefore, entrepreneurs would have to develop capacities similar to that of artists.
If in the exact sciences the important thing is to develop the methodology and technique, what is important to develop in Art? The important thing in Art is Sensitivity. Now, how is this sensitivity developed for business? Let's see the capabilities that every artist in the business world needs.
The necessary abilities of a business man, like those of a painter or a musician, are of three types: Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes:
Knowledge
Technology
Strategy
Marketing
Finance
Operations
etc.
Skills
Team Management
Negotiation
Communication
Creativity
etc.
Attitudes
Leadership
Risk tolerance
Commitment
Responsibility
Adaptation
Cooperation
etc.
In reality, with this classification of a person's abilities in Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes, we are defining the person in himself, no matter what he does. Depending on what Knowledge a person possesses, what Skills they have developed in their life, or what Attitudes they show in their behavior, we will be in front of an individual or another completely different. The development of these capacities shapes us as people and therefore, as entrepreneurs.
But each of these categories (Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes) has different effects. The impact they have on the person is proportional to the effort that it costs us to acquire them.
Thus, Knowledge is the easiest to acquire, and also the easiest to forget, it belongs to the “world” of Theory and the impact on the improvement of the person is small.
Skills are more difficult to achieve, they require practicing until we master them; however they accompany us throughout life, they are within the scope of the Experience (for example, learning to drive or ride a bicycle).
But the most difficult to achieve are Attitudes, which are not memorized or practiced; they must be acquired by example or imitation of people whom we admire or whose model we wish to follow. Attitudes are what define a person most deeply, since they determine what one really wants to do; they are directly related to our Values.
But the initial question was why failure is the key to future success?
Indeed, to succeed in the business adventure, the person must develop the skills that are lacking in order to succeed.
Of all of them, the most important will be those that have to do with Skills and especially with Attitudes.
To acquire them you need experience and have seen yourself in many situations with different people. Only from experience we can successfully solve the problems that arise. For this reason, at first, we often make mistakes and failures will occur; but it must be precisely these that act as the motor of our learning process.
In short, in the company, the only valid method to progress is that of "trial and error"; it is by rectifying the mistakes made that we are progressing and hitting our path.
This learning mechanism, based on "trial and error", reflects whether or not we are aware of mastering a capacity, and on the other, whether we are competent (we dominate) or not.
Let's take an example: a person who learns to negotiate is likely to be “blind” the first time they try to make a deal with a supplier, not to realize that they do not know how to negotiate. When, after closing the deal, you meditate quietly in your office and realize how unprofitable the agreement has been, and how much it has been for your provider, you will pass to the status of "ignorant", realizing their incompetence to negotiate.
He will immediately go to work as an “apprentice” and will try to improve his negotiating skills with practice. In this process, you will strive on each deal to do better, and close bad, regular, and "less bad" deals. Over time, you will end up mastering the ability to negotiate and you will do so unconsciously (like the experienced driver of a car changing gear). You will have reached the stage of "wise" and the ability to negotiate will accompany you throughout your life.
In all the process that goes from the "blind" to the "wise", only errors and failures are what make us aware of our shortcomings and help us develop the capabilities we need. Therefore, failures are the prelude to future successes.
In our culture, failures are often viewed as stigmas that mark people as "failed" (synonymous with useless). It is a very different vision to that of other cultures in which people who, for example, present themselves for a job interview, with some failure in their CV are considered very valuable candidates, since they have lived a learning process that can be extremely useful and have capabilities that they could not have otherwise acquired.
In the US, for example, when an entrepreneur asks an investor for money, the investor usually asks him how many times he has previously failed, and contrary to what seems logical in our culture, he trusts more in an entrepreneur who has already failed. on several occasions.
As a conclusion we can say that "Trial and error" is the engine of human learning. Business decision making is always accompanied by a failure rate; the point is to minimize this percentage.
80% of people who have had a business failure and embark on another experience succeed.
