For Harvard Business Review's April issue on failure, I penned a piece on the experience of going through a failed IPO. In one context or another, you've likely failed, too. You may have chosen to frame it some other way ("experience," "lessons learned," etc.), but it was failure.
First, welcome to the club. We've all been there. Second, for a book we're writing on the DNA of entrepreneurship, my co-authors Richard Harrington, Tsun-yan Hsieh, and I have developed a checklist on how to reflect on failure. So I thought I'd share:
Checkbox 1: Was This Really My True North?
Sometimes things fail. Why? Because you may not have cared enough. The fact is, highly capable people are often driven to success standards that are extrinsically measured -- e.g. they provide external credentialization -- but have little in common with what they truly wanted to accomplish. If you are working without meaning in a role, task, or job, your missing drive will make it harder for you to succeed. If you are conducting a post-mortem of a failure, ask yourself, Was I truly self-motivated to succeed, or was someone (or something) else driving me to succeed?
To read the full, original article click on this link: Anthony Tjan: The Five-Step Failure Checklist
Author: Anthony Tjan
