|
Hello
In the first 3 months of 2009, just over 1,000 businesses in South Africa liquidated.
In the context of previous years, this isn't all that bad: from 2000 to 2005, South Africa had 6 757 liquidations on average per annum, or 1,689 per quarter (Stats SA). But try telling the "owners" of recently-failed businesses that things aren't so bad...
One could deduce 2 key points from this simple comparison:
1. it seems there will always be some failures, regardless of external conditions like the global economy; and
2. perhaps, conversely, we have far greater control than we assume in determining our success.
But before I carry on with why it's a good thing for start-ups to fail, here are this month's featured workshop and article:
- Featured workshop: Being Resilient: a workshop for teams wanting to handle their challenges -- whether routine or extreme - with elegance and intelligence.
- Fast Forward Failing: Change your experience of failure from foe to friend to accelerate your learning and success -- Corné tells us how with a simple 6-layer model to re-frame our failures
Back to those statistics on business liquidations. Many of those 1,000+ business failures in 2009 Q1 were probably start-ups ie. they didn't complete their first 3 to 12 months of trading.
For almost every entrepreneur starting a new venture, there is only one thing worse than the failure of a start-up: a business that just survives start-up, hanging onto life by tooth and nail, only to eventually fail slowly.
This applies not only to stand-alone small businesses, but also to projects, brands, product lines and every conceivable type of human endeavour in large organisations, including big business and government.
Slow failure is also frustratingly well-known at home, too: some appliance failures seem programmed to happen just after the warranty expires.
So if slow failure is to be avoided, should we be striving for fast failure? Well, no.
In striving for success, we should be setting short term targets that indicate if we're on track for eventual, longer term success or not. It's much like an aeroplane's autopilot that tracks and corrects the plane's flight path against the flight plan, ensuring the plane reaches certain way points by certain time checks. The earlier and the more frequently the way points are scheduled, the smaller and easier the corrections are.
Whether we're planning a life goal or a business goal, "early failure" is really just an early indicator that corrective action or re-planning is needed to get our plane back on schedule (or the schedule to match where our plane is).
In practical terms for the entrepreneur, the first major way points for a new venture could be practical market research, followed by a business case, a thorough business plan and then product research & development. Only then should you consider raising finance and starting a business.
In my coaching and mentoring with entrepreneurs and executives, it's the savvy leader who seeks "early failure". But this seldom looks like failure as we might recognise it: more time spent planning; candid feedback solicited from a colleague; or a solid, meaningful conversation with a coach can uncover many risks and failure points. Each risk could be pre-empted or corrected before investing in anything more than time for the conversation.
In fact, some of the smartest entrepreneurs and executives I know have several concurrent coaches and mentors, each explicitly contracted to support specific aspects of their leadership and the business. We don't always recognise them as coaches and mentors, though, because they might be disguised as a colleague, consultant, advisor or non-executive director...
After all, if it's a choice between one magnificent business failure that loses years of emotional investment and a small country's GDP versus R30,000 for 6 months of professional coaching that culls 50 "failures" per hour, I know where I'd happily invest my money!
When it's so obvious what a good conversation is worth, it's not surprising that smart people are increasingly hiring a coach or mentor to help them "fail" quickly and unnoticeably cheaply!
In next month's Fulfilment, we explore how to get more from your marketing without spending more.
Until then, all the best.
Brent Combrink
Fulfilment editor and ProMentor's founding owner
Cell: +27 (0)82 425 2708
Email your letters to: brent@promentor.co.za
PS: On 10-11 June, 2009, I'll be one of the speakers at the Black Hole of Recession conference at The Indaba Hotel in Fourways, Joburg. Join executives, chief economists, government department heads and other concerned participants intent on exploring topics from survival solutions through to opportunities for your own economic turn-around. Enquiries and bookings: Theo Ramparsad: 011 781 9511 (tel) or e-mail theo@syncombi.co.za.
Featured Workshop:
Being Resilient
Failure can't always be avoided. Then what matters is not how we failed to avoid failure, but how we get up and get going again.
This one-day workshop gets you:
+ Self assessment of your resilience intelligence +
+ Learn the structure of what makes you resilient +
+ Develop flexible problem-solving skills +
+ Learn strategies for strengthening your inner self +
+ Practice turning problems and challenges into opportunities +
Available at your offices and scheduled at your convenience
in Cape Town, Gauteng and KZN.
Investment for up to 10 delegates:
R10,500 full-day
R6,500 half-day
*R150 pp after 10 delegates
Includes all notes and pre- and post-workshop briefings
Excludes VAT, venue and catering
To book this or other topics, call ProMentor at 021 683 7575
or email info@promentor.co.za
Fast Forward Failing
By Corné Mac Kenzie
28 May 2009
There is no failure -- there is only feedback. Hard to swallow this statement? Consider that the sooner you get this "feedback", the sooner you can get over the failure. These 6 perspectives can help you get your feedback faster to start turning failure from foe to friend.
Read more...
Back to Newsletter Archives Page
|
