Dealing with failure is a normal aspect of business life. What matters is how you respond and overcome that failure to bounce back. The opposite of success isn’t failure, it’s how you learn from that failure. If you study the lives of many successful people, you will learn that they also had to overcome failure. Did you know that Michale Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team or that Walt Disney was told he lacked imagination? Even the Beatles were rejected from Decca Recording Studios and were told they would have no future in the music industry. These famous celebrities didn’t let these setbacks stop them from achieving their goals and neither should you.
Here are 5 tips to bounce back after failure.
- Address what led to the failure. It’s okay to be frustrated by failure, but avoiding it won’t fix anything. Be sure to confront what problems led to the failure at hand. Emotions are normal during this time, but try to use these emotions productively to grow from it. For example, if a shipment for an order went out late, try to address what in the chain in command fell apart.
- Take full responsibility. Don’t make excuses for your failure. Rather, own up to it and see what led to it. It may be necessary to apologize to those directly affected by your mistakes. Then assure them that you have a solution for your problem. In the same shipment example, it would be necessary to take responsibility for your part in the shipment delay. Furthermore, be sure to reach out to your customer and apologize for any delays this may have caused.
- Plan a solution or your next steps. Part of the solution can be an apology and sometimes more work is needed. Consider where you fell short and create safety nets so you don’t fall short in the future. If a shipment went out late, maybe a truck went down. Create some sort of backup plan so there is no delay if this happens again.
- Take action on your solution to fix the problem at hand. Don’t spend too much time dwelling on your failure and instead use this failure to motivate you to do better. Now that you’ve planned out a solution, it’s necessary to plan the steps to put it in place.
- Learn from your mistakes and plan ahead so this doesn’t happen in the future. Consider ways your company can learn from this by making changes that can lead to more growth. Collaborate with your coworkers and employees to brainstorm what changes can be made to avoid this in the future. You don’t have to do this alone.
Every business owner has come across problems and failures, it’s part of life. What matters is how you handle it and learn from it. Failure is a learning experience. It is important to assess what went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again. If Walt Disney gave up after he was told he lacks imagination, we wouldn’t have Disneyland, Disneyworld, or any of the great movies from Disney. It’s important to persevere because imagine what you would be missing out on if you didn’t. This as a lesson to never give up