In May 2009, I had the pleasure of attending a Maximum Impact simulcast, which included an interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In my notes from that interview, I wrote the following:
3 Qualities of People at the Top Level of Any Organization:
- Self-belief
- Hard worker
- Able to rise from failure
That last one caught my attention. Who has not failed at something? Whatever achievement one pursues, obstacles are as sure as the sun rising. How people respond to obstacles is what sets the great ones apart.
I think the key ingredient to rising from failure is persistence – the stubborn will to keep pressing. (Click here for my previous blog on “pressing the initiative.”) Great businesses respond to failure by following the advice from the old song: “pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again.” That’s good advice whether “starting over” means starting from scratch or just making a tweak. The point is to not stand idle. If you just keep churning with the best decisions you can make, odds are that your efforts will eventually bear fruit – and it’s likely that future yields won’t be as difficult as the first.
Ironically, failure is often just as likely to come from success – or more specifically, from resting in success. Pioneers such as Wang Labs, Alta Vista, and Rio’s MP3 player are largely unknown to us today, but the products they created live on in Hewlett Packard, Google, and Apple’s iPod. These pioneers died not because their products failed, but because they failed to persist in the efforts that make them successful in the first place. Their innovative competitors quickly passed them by and took over the market.
Whether you have succeeded or failed, you must persist in your endeavor to be great. There is no silver bullet. Great achievements result from hard work over the long term.
