“A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

As corporate entrepreneurs, we know that we must always try new things and therefore, we must also fail or we will never find success!

Do You Really Need To Fail?

Yes! If you understand how to learn from failure…if you try to hide your failure or pass the blame on to someone else, then failure will not help you in the future!

How To Learn From Failure

The following can be used with any failure, large or small. You can use as many or as few as you feel comfortable, however, the more you use the more you will learn from your failure.

• What was the root cause?
• Were there any warning signs?
• Can you identify any variations and deviations from your original plan that included a successful outcome?
• Did you take into consideration how others were affected by the failure, both positive and negative?
• Did you conduct a post failure SWOT analysis and compare it to your original?
• Did you identify the successes within the failure?
• Did you make sure your measurement of success was realistic?
• Did you create a list of lessons learned and review it prior to taking on your next project?
• Did you make note of people that gave you good and not so good advice?

Corporate Entrepreneurs Take Action

If you are trying new things, you are using your imagination and your corporate entrepreneurial spirit.  We know that ideas are a dime a dozen.  We know that when an idea comes to us we begin to talk about it.  This is all fine and well, but only when an idea is put into action can we truly see its value.  Sometimes the value is not what we thought it would be, however, at least we took action.

The Real Success Is The Journey

The real success in business is the journey of doing something.  So if you fail, it means you are on the journey and therefore you are already successful!

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.“

Winston Churchill