"One must be God to distinguish successes from failures" Anton Chekov.
The whole reason businesses fail to thrive is because they strive for aversion to risk. They tend to approach highly dynamic markets with the struggle against that risk for which, if they just gave in, they could truly become successful. Those businesses and organisations that continually outperform their counterparts take risks rather regularly and brace themselves quite liberally for the risks that may be involved to achieve the final success. This innovation becomes the success maker. It not only drives that company through failure and into success, it literally makes the failure seem a part of the plan and as just another step towards the ultimate end goal.
Consider the years after Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard Law School before Microsoft became a corporation. Mary, his mother, and undoubtedly others, could only see it as an epic failure.
All too often we are quick to judge others or ourselves in an overly hasty manner to describe something as a failure. We come to this conclusion well before the facts have all come to their conclusion. The jury may be still out and we either give up, quit, or tell others to do so. When, in fact, something that seems such a great failure quite often is really a learning period from which we can and do learn great things. They also often lead us to great ideas and great successes.
The indistinct line between success and failure is often not seen clearly. Perhaps it would be more helpful to view that line as an interchangeable relationship of two supporting halves.
The Eastern perspective is traditionally more relaxed on this, tending to embrace paradox as a natural part of life. This dance of opposition can be seen in the concepts of yin and yang, dishes like sweet and sour and, crucially, in seeing crisis as a foundation for opportunity.
When Success is Really Failure Disguised: Success that is short term is really just making a huge failure. The quick fix is usually just a patch that backfires when reality resurfaces. This idea can be illustrated with a cyclist who gets a puncture on their tire. Most would approach it with an "Ah-Ha" moment and simply patch it up. Then simply get back on the same road and continue toward their goal. The road, however, is very bad and continues to puncture the tires more and more until the cyclist ends up with a very unusable tire. However, they are so far down the road that going back is now out of the question, and going forward is just as bad. The shortcut road is now an epic failure.
The Samurai approach to innovation is not that innovation is a helter-skelter affair that has no rhyme or reason to it. Innovation is a learnt skill. If you are looking for teachers of this art you can do no better than the Japanese Samurai.
It is well known that Samurais were amongst the most effective, fiercest and bravest warriors that ever lived. What is less known is central mindset that guided their actions. Samurais recognised that focusing on victory was an impediment to winning a fight, a battle or a war.
Samurais honed the ability to stay incredibly present. They understood that it was the will to win rather than the vision of winning that was the central key to victory. In fact, they lived by a credo of achieving the goal by ignoring the goal.
The vision may be as large as Microsoft, or IBM, or may be one of their successful products, but the most anyone can see is the next step. The most important part of reaching our goals, then, is to bring our attention to the present moment. While it is okay to take a short glance at the future or past and apply them to the present, the key is to keep our mindset in the present.
All too often we tend to look to what could go wrong, and only fixate what went right in the past as our present set of circumstances. This is where the downfall begins. Therefore, the moment you fix your eye on a far off goal is the moment you file it away. When you do this, then you give your mind the privilege of freed up time and space to innovate the steps to get there. By looking at only the next step and not how it pertains to the ultimate goal then you will not get stuck one the steps that seemingly do not fit. The greatest innovations, therefore, will be found in bracing the unknown possibilities in between. Only by taking those risks and detours can you find the true path to your goal.
As has been the case at IBM, "The greater the level of collaborative innovation, the greater the financial performance. Regardless of the metric-revenue growth, operating margin growth or average profitability over time, strong collaborators consistently come out on top."
Embrace those failures. Sometimes things that don't work out simply needed a change of direction to change from a massive flop to a great boom. Therefore, the key to learning how to innovate is in consistently practicing it. Simply build upon what works and learn from what doesn't.
To become a true master you need to know how to release the concept of fear and failure along with the burning desire to succeed. Trying to innovate the outcome is the number one killer of true success. Trying to control every step between now and the goal will only generate caution, fear, and paralysis which will then stop you and the team from true successful results.
To truly embrace success you need to consistently work on developing a culture that is founded on reinvention. Only in consistently evolving to the needs of the company and the changing economy can you succeed in reaching your goal.
Business can learn great things from our children. To consistently grow they need to be open to vision, ideas, and look at the world with fresh eyes. They need to leave behind the deeply entrenched belief systems, and patterns of perception, along with the taboos and rules of the past. By changing our habits in thought we can change our outcome.
About the Author:
Author: Rha K. Cardinale can show your company how to easily create a culture of innovation. Visit the "exciting Leadership" website for more information on building innovative teams
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