I Failed My Way to Success – Take 2
It seems yesterday’s post had a few technical problems (well human technical problems) and the core part of the article didnt actually make it to posting. So I thought i would repost the article again.
Recently we closed down some of our businesses. These closures were pure because the business model and products that we were working on were just not working. That is life. Things work and things don’t. However, what was interesting for me was that one of the blogs picked up that we had closed some of our businesses and many of the comments were negative and critical of us failing. It was then that I remember the Thomas Edison quote of “I failed my way to success”.
The business we closed down was called SoBox – short for social media in a box. It was aimed at providing the real estate agent market with an out of the box social media solution. In launching the product we discovered a few things. Firstly that most real estate agents really dont have much of an idea about social media and more importantly have almost no desire to leverage it. Secondly, even when we did sell the product to agents, the cost of sales didnt meant we were losing $ on each sale. So naturally we closed the business but took the learns and leveraged them into another product.
Now some of the pundits out there called this a failure. Technically they are correct however from the failure came learnings and from learnings came new business opportunities. So, overall, it is possible to turn failure into success – but only as long as we plan to fail and plan to learn.
So how should businesses approach failure?
Firstly, lets get real. People fail. Businesses fail. No one is perfect. It is only through trial and error that we are able to develop new and innovative products.
When planning the launch of a product, don’t be afraid to fail. Put in place clear milestones / expectations of how the business will perform and then track performance against these targets. If you are not meeting expectations, then look at why this is happening. Is it the product? Is it the customers? Is it the general market? Is it your go to market approach? What ever the reason roll up the sleeves and find out what is happening otherwise you will continue to fail to meet expectations.
Often any brand damage is reduced by small market trials where you can enter and exit the market without much noise.
If the product or go to market approach cant be fixed, don’t be afraid to pull the product. You are better to take a product off the market to fix it than to try to fix it while still in the market. And if you come to the conclusion that the product or business model just doesn’t work, close the business. This better than pouring good money after bad.
Hold post mortems. Look at all aspects of the business and find out why things arent going to plan. Talk to customers, sales people, anyone who will listen and has an opinion. Learn learn learn!
Finally look at what you have achieved and what you have learned and then see if these learnings can be applied to a new product or service. Too often large businesses lose the knowledge they have gained purely because different parts of the business are involved in the project. Therefore having cross business project teams is also important so that knowledge is not lost.
The greatest crime for any business is not failing but failing to try!
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