My definition of success and failure
Typical success factors for choosing where to play (Suitability):
– If successful, does its result align with your objective?
– What is the required resources for generating the expected results? Will you or did you obtain it?
– How big is the opportunity the place where you will go? That place will be bigger or smaller. How attractive is it?
Typical success factors for optimizing the resources:
– What is productivity of using resources?
– What is speed of implementing your plan?
Fail Fast, Fail Cheap, Learn Fast
Failure means:
(i) You have already experienced it
(ii) You may learn from it.
Do not hesitate to take cheap action as soon as possible. We should start to implement our plan, even it may fail cheap. So we can win fast or fail fast. In case of fast failure, you could learn and increase the success possibility for the next attempt.
For example:
Do not concern too much to start a business. You can start something small, really small. Even fail, you can get learning curve (experience curve).
Benefit of fail fast, fail cheap, learn fast: Start what you want to do quickly. The faster you [fail fast, fail cheap, learn fast], the closer you are to the success.
The research of the dynamics of failure as bellow show that “the penultimate attempt shows systematically better performance than the initial attempt”.
Even failure, why should we be consistent in what we do?
The relationship between the last attempts and success possibility for next attempt is:
(i) What kind of failure did you make?
(ii) Based on type of failure, what will you learn to improve the next attempt?
(iii) The relevancy of the last failed attempts and the next attempt. Are they in the same field, industry, major, sector.
Reference:
The tipping point between failure and success – HBR IdeaCast #713