When to pull the plug and learn from failure – Innovation Excellence
Creating a new venture, championing a new process or offering a new course or program is exciting. However, statistically, it is more likely you will fail than succeed and there is a fine line between determination and pig-headed optimism. You might not have the skills to do what you love. At some point, you will have to consider quitting and moving on.
Even the big boys fail often.Microsoft will shutter its Health Dashboard site and remove its Band applications from the Microsoft Store, Google Play and Apple App store on May 31, 2019, according to an FAQ page on its website.
Quitting is not a value in the entrepreneurial lexicon. We are all encouraged to follow our dreams, no matter the cost. It is a myth. “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” Some, given stress and burnout levels, would rather see you keep trying, even if it kills you. Don’t let it.
You should keep a failure resume. What’s the point of such self-flagellation?
Because you learn much more from failure than success, and honestly analyzing one’s failures can lead to the type of introspection that helps us grow — as well as show that the path to success isn’t a straight line.
Your failure resume would include:
2. It is making you sick
3. The people you work for or with are unethical
4. You realize that the window of opportunity has permanently closed
5. Your innerpreneurial instincts are telling you that you are doing what you are doing for the wrong reasons.
6. You are willing to take personal responsibility for your failure and apply the lessons to your next initiative
7. You have shown that your business model is fundamentally flawed and that you don’t have the time, resources or interest in fixing it
8. You have changed your priorities
9. Your life is out of balance and practicing entrepreneurship is further tipping the scales
10. You believe the fates are working against you. Truth be TOLD, sometimes they are.
There is a difference between quitting a project and quitting on yourself. Sh$t happens and learning from mistakes and how you adapted to the inevitable slings and arrows of misfortune shapes us all, if we let it. It will discourage and destroy us if we don’t.
Being innovative isn’t just about what you start — it’s about what you stop. “You don’t have the capacity – the time, resources or energy – to do the new things because you are busy maintaining the old ones,” explains innovation expert Jeff DeGraff. Don’t get caught in this trap: Figure out what practices or ideas are no longer serving you and make room for new ones.
“Stopping things is hard. It’s full of feelings of loss, disappointment and failure. It takes more than creativity. It takes courage to stop what you’ve been doing to make room for the things your organization wants to start doing now.”
The history of business and innovation proves that some of the biggest winners have been the biggest quitters at some point in their career. The important point, is that, after quitting, they continued to move forward, not sideways or backwards, with their next idea.
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Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org and co-editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship