As humans we live every moment of our life thinking how we could make our life failure free, we always like to ride on success and when we attain success we never see beyond it. We get hungry for more, we stop realizing there could be bumps/ pot holes that could be on our way, we are so confident and over sure that, we think nothing can go wrong anymore and that’s right when we fall in to the pot hole of failure. And now this is the situation that actually decides if we have it in us to make it big from here or will we remain inside the pot hole as we never reflected up on or were prepared enough to get over the road block.
Most of the world had written off ‘The Amitabh Bachchan’ in the late 90’s as he sunk deeply into the sea of debt and the success wave that he was riding on for over 3 decades had all unexpectedly come to an unceremonious end by the bankruptcy of the company he had fielded to make it even bigger in Bollywood. No one ever thought he could ever rebuild a better ship and bounce back as a larger than life person by the kind of success he started getting in early 21st century especially by his splendid performance as a host of KBC on Star Plus. Now the world just looks at the line graph of Big B’s fall and rise in these 2 decades while the much larger learning’s lie in the kind of things he has been through and how he got back, as they teach us, ‘why failure is important?’, ‘what failure could do to you?’.
If we use some historical data or just some memory of past and take 5 such people whom we’ve observed for years together and who have made it big in life, in what ever field or context, few things would stand out commonly in all of them, these people would have faced more obstacles, would have made more sacrifices, would have faced a lot of criticism, would have been tagged as a loser by a lot of them earlier in their life. Yet these people face all that and make it big, it’s not just about their talent, skill set or knowledge, not even experience. It’s purely about their attitude, their focus and more importantly their faith in their own selves. But for these 3 qualities, they wouldn’t have made it anywhere close to where they got. Now take up another set of 5 people whom you think you thought would make it as big, but they dint, and try to think why they dint make it where you thought they would. After a level of analysis you’ll figure it’s just because of the lack of these 3 qualities in them right when they needed it the most. They would have had these qualities in them for a major part of their life, but if they don’t possess them when they needed it the most, especially when time was testing them, they would have lost it and more often than not, never bounced back or at least back to the earlier level.
Let’s just talk about Vinod Kambli and Sachin Tendulkar, great friends, great cricketers right from a young age, but one made it as a god of the sport but the other turned out to be a sore loser. We could simply see the difference in the attitude of these two from a couple of instances, the semifinal of the ’96 world cup, where Kambli wept like a child would; he couldn’t take failure well and post that match he was dropped from the team for the next series due to other disciplinary issues. The aftermath of that match prompted us about some inherent qualities of Kambli, his attitude, his focus and his self belief. As a result of his behavior he dug his own grave and we would never see any more of him with respect to a cricketing field except for a few series till 2000/01 when he was dropped for the last time due to his inability to play short pitched balls (he never really tried to rectify or learn) and poor form. He did not know how to overcome that one weakness and his talent wasn’t sufficient in itself to take his career any forward and so he lost the race of making it big in life and now we remember him for the wrong things often than for the right things. That’s what failure precisely does to you, it over shadows all the good that you have done before.
Another interesting case in the context of failure is the apple of the worlds eye (quite literally) – Steve Jobs, someone who was thrown out of his own company, who built something great, could not keep tempo with others and his own men showed their back to him. Where did all the success go? It just couldn’t come to his rescue; he was simply shown the doors! But this man was not someone who’d succumb to such hasty actions, he still possessed self belief, he was still focused on what he wanted and he knew what he was capable of, he had the right attitude and that’s the reason we all see him back to where he belonged with products much more innovative than we could have ever expected of him (his company). That’s the differentiator between a diamond and just any other piece of stone; how the stone takes the heat and other things in the process of becoming a diamond from just being a stone, and now that is Steve Jobs for us today!
Now let’s move from individuals to corporations, what differentiates those on the top to the other thousands of them who never make it? Some of them do well for some time and then aren’t able to sustain and slowly get back to where they originally belonged, to the bottom. Now what have the corporations that are at the top done and how? What differentiates them from the ones not at the top or from the ones who lost the race by some margin? Corporations that have done well over a period of time haven't done so cos of their quality or price alone, they have done well cos competition has kept them on their toes and they have faced the competition head on with the right attitude. Microsoft for instance has been on its toes since ever not just cos of the companies that are in the same line of business but also cos of companies like Google, Apple etc, who are all in the business of technology. The fear of being taken over has always made these companies perform better than the average; they learnt rapidly from every failure and bounced back with better offerings to all their stakeholders. Not once did these companies remain in the pot hole after an accident or failure, every time they faced failure, they took it very seriously and worked back up with focus and right attitude.
On hindsight we realize that failure really plays a crucial role in determining who has a pleasure ride and who remains in the pot holes and today if I had to understand an individual or a corporation I would not ask for its track record of success, I’d rather ask for the track record of its failure, that would be a more authenticate way to assess the capabilities and the heights a person or corporation would reach over a period of time. Failure doesn't necessarily have to be big, to test a person’s capability and attitude, even small set backs every now and then can give an idea about an individual’s character. But let’s agree on one thing, Failure is necessary!!
P.S – This write up was inspired by the talk of Harsha Bhogle at IIM-A a few years ago.
Click here for the complete talk or Here for just a small bite on failure.
Today’s Favorite Line – Failure is the stepping stone to Success (class 3)
Today’s Favorite Song – Cry Cry (Jhoota hi sahi)
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