Today’s blog post is going to be a bit different than most. Instead of talking about what it takes to be successful, I’m going to explore the biggest failures I’ve experienced, along with lessons learned. It’s actually common to fail more than succeed, particularly when doing something new for the first time…
Unfortunately, our society doesn’t take kindly to failure, and there’s a tendency for people to want to distance themselves from failure, instead of taking it for what it often is – a learning opportunity.
I’m sure we all have experienced failure of one kind or another – certainly you have if you’ve ever tried to do anything significant, like starting a new company or bringing a new product to market.
Perhaps one of the most renowned believers in failure was Thomas Edison, who is known for numerous sayings about failure, including:
- “Fail Fast!” Edison understood that one of the secrets of success is learning to fail fast, so you learn more quickly and don’t waste precious time in a failed state or continuing down the wrong path
- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, which he said about his invention of the light bulb, which was no easy undertaking to invent
- “Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”
- “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
- “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
So, with that as a backdrop for viewing failure as a necessary set of stepping stones on the “learning journey” that leads to success, here’s what I learned from just some of my own many and biggest failures.
1. Failure to ensure you have a viable, volume path to market that’s truly committed - how many products are developed only to die a horrible death when they encounter a company’s sales force? I once worked for a mainframe software company that had an incredibly powerful direct sales force, tremendous enterprise credibility and presence. We attempted to introduce Web-based products to an emerging marketplace through this very sales force in the mid-to-late 1990′s. Not a pretty sight.
This sales force was accustomed to selling big deals – millions of dollars per sale down to a few hundred grand. When faced with a product that would likely sell for a mere $30,000 to $50,000, they turned their nose up and refused to sell it.
Who could blame them? We ultimately had to sell the product via telesales instead, unable to gain the interest of the company’s primary go-to-market channel.
In retrospect, this was probably forseeable had we taken the time to engage with Sales sooner, openly and candidly discussed the average deal size and buyer (who was different than the contact they typically knew).
Always ensure you have a full understanding of your chosen route to market, what motivates them to sell, and why they will be inclined to sell YOUR new product (in addition to or instead of what they’re already selling).
In the end, the product didn’t drive enough revenue to compete with the big revenue producers, so resources got reallocated, the product got cancelled and the team was dispersed to other projects. Not a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, as happens in large companies, there were also political forces at play… we didn’t know it at the time, but the Board had forced management to “do something in the Web space” against management’s wishes… and we were the token Web project that was destined to fail… followed by a “told you so.” At least that’s what we heard later.
Ugh! Well, we made enough other mistakes to fail on our own – we didn’t need that kind of help!
2. Failure to project “quantitative”, anecdotal information across a market – most everyone knows how important it is to speak with potential buyers to understand their needs, wants and circumstances before investing in developing a product. However, when you pitch a product concept and get feedback from potential customers, keep in mind that unless you are engaging directly with them on a real project applying your technology or product, they are just giving you their opinions.
If you take what they say and rely too much on it, it will in all likelihood get you into deep trouble, because it may very well not project across the marketplace as a whole.
This is especially counterintuitive when dealing with large enterprise customers, whose needs are often rather unique and uncommon. It’s important to always validate your findings, assumptions and beliefs about a market opportunity with statistically significant research, where possible; e.g., by running a survey of your target market and verifying the key assumptions that must be true for you to succeed.
Whatever time and money you think you’re saving by not doing a sufficient amount of primary market research will pale in comparison to the costs of investing too much in the wrong direction.
Instead, it’s better to learn as much as you can early, and begin that “learning journey” and adjust course toward success incrementally, because you *will* have to adjust course to succeed.
3. Failure to be high enough on the customer’s new priority list to get budget – because economic and market conditions are volatile and things change so quickly, it’s easy to find yourself too far down the priority list of top issues to find funding for your product. What was a high priority and getting funded last year may be off the list this year. It’s important to know how customers are allocating their resources and prioritizing their spending.
One way to potentially avoid this pitfall is to solve critical “jobs to be done” that you know customers must get done in their business. These important jobs are less likely to go away or drop in priority to the point no funding will be available (but must still be verified).
4. Failure to get to market soon enough – if you take too long getting to market with your product, you run the risk of facing unforeseen competitors, changing market conditions or technology disruptions that cause you to be outdated before you ever launch. In many markets today, by the time you recognize an opportunity, hundreds of other smart people have also seen this same opportunity emerging. Failing to get to market and gain enough customer wins soon enough can easily allow competitors to lock up sales channels, key customer accounts and become the recognized brand in a category.
5. Failure to get to market late enough – my wife tells me I’m often too early to market, being ahead of mainstream adopters by several years. It seems like it’s great to be a pioneer and be “first”, but after many years of being first, I have agree that “the pioneers take all the arrows”. It’s better to be what’s called a “fast follower” than to be first, because those who are first to market with something totally new often must educate the market and may not find enough early adopters to sustain growth, which results in falling into Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm”. I have been deep down in the chasm many times – it’s a dark, lonely place you don’t want to go, so think not twice but three times before rushing out to be “first”.
6. Failure to pay close enough attention to disruptive market or technology changes – this one happens all the time in our rapidly-changing world, where new technology comes along and disrupts the status quo. What happened when Word Perfect didn’t convert to Windows? What happened when Lotus 123 failed to support Windows? They were replaced by Microsoft Word, Excel then Office. What happened to Kodak when digital cameras took off? Film was replaced with memory, CDROM, hard disks and Internet storage.
7. Failure to secure enough funding and keep enough cash on hand - one of the most excruciating ways to fail is to run out of money and not be able to secure more. Unfortunately, it happens all the time. Entrepreneurs tend to be optimists by their very nature, so it’s tempting to avoid raising enough money in the hopes that profitability will be just around the corner.
I can tell you from experience, Murphy never sleeps, and whatever can go wrong, absolutely will go wrong… and you will need at least two to three times as much money as it “should” take when you begin any serious undertaking.
I now realize this is due to the “learning journey” that always accompanies doing anything new, along with the constant adaptation to changing market conditions, and unforeseeable surprises that life throws at us. It’s no fun laying people off, shutting your company down, fending off bill collectors, losing your house to foreclosure and feeling like a loser… all because you didn’t have enough cash on hand to get through the invertible ups and downs that always come in business.
My wife and I lost one business to Y2K and 9/11. Y2K caused the economy to tank. This impacted our cash position and put us at risk. Then after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, people were afraid to go shopping at the mall.
If you don’t have deep enough pockets and cash on hand for a rainy day, you can’t sustain a $30,000 to $40,000 per month loss for very long, and when you’re out of cash, you’re out of business (and nobody will rescue you in most cases). Lots of small businesses were taken out by 9/11, so we’re in good company… still, that’s little consolation.
So do yourself a favor, keep enough cash on hand to get through at least 3 months, in business and personally, because you just never know…
8. Failure to get the right people on the bus… and the wrong ones off – the most important and impactful assets any company has are its people. This is especially true of technology businesses, but also for most businesses. Anytime you have the wrong person in a key position, it causes problems. And when this happens, the right people often realize where the problem is.Failure to deal with people problems only makes things worse.
The tough decision to replace someone who isn’t cutting it, reassign them to a more appropriate position or do what must be done is a formula for disaster. Those who are doing their jobs quickly lose respect for the leader whenever they don’t handle problem situations affecting the entire team, which at best impacts their performance, and at worst, causes the top performers to abandon ship.People are what makes everything possible.
Getting the best possible people in each key position is one of the secrets to success. Surrounding one’s self with as many people who are better than you is another one. And outsourcing everything else that you’re not able to be #1 at doing is another one.
9. Failure to develop a high quality product – customers will not put up with shoddy quality, at least not once they have a better alternative. There is no substitute for shipping a high-quality product. If you can’t ship quality, don’t ship at all. Wait until you can ship a quality product, no matter what.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. And bad news travels ten times faster than good news, and 100 times faster through a sales force, so make darned sure your product is top quality no matter what.
No matter how important it *seems* to be to make the scheduled ship date, if the product isn’t ready, don’t ship it. No matter how much political capital it costs, make sure you ship a quality product (even if it’s late). Shipping a product that’s known not to be ready for market or that has quality issues is never the right decision for your customers… so it’s never the right decision for you or your company, either.
10. Failure to be flexible and adaptable – I don’t know about you, but I seem to be hard-headed about certain things. And whenever we become stubborn about things, it’s very easy to make mistakes. I have learned the hard way that flexibility and adaptability are much preferable alternatives to failure. This is especially true today, when we have so many things in constant flux all around us. When we become inflexible, we break more easily.
When we fail to adapt, we face extinctinction. This is the very essence of how nature intends for things to be. Evolution rewards those who adapt and buries those who don’t, never to be heard from again (except perhaps one day to be rediscovered by the archeologists of tomorrow).
I have made every single one of the above mistakes – some of them more than once!
How about you?
I hope you can somehow learn from my failures and perhaps even fail faster, so you’ll find yourself on the road to success sooner and sooner each time you try.
Let me leave you with this. It’s been said that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This may be cliché, but it’s absolutely true. So many times, we try something new and then we fail. If we keep on trying and learning, we will in all likelihood succeed after enough attempts. Perseverance is the key to succeeding. Those who have it win, those who don’t give up and move on.
Believe in yourself that that you can accomplish anything you become 100% committed to achieving and you will. There are relatively few physical limits remaining that mankind hasn’t found a way to sail past in today’s age.
The single most important thing I learned from all my failures is… If it’s important enough to start, it’s important enough to finish – no matter what!
Best of luck to you.
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What I Learned from my Top 10 Biggest Failures – http://b2l.me/drmn3 And not giving up…
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