Hi Friends...

This is to all our CD members who are facing Failure/temporary setback.

Motivate yourself and I am sure you will meet with SUCCESS very soon.

Good Luck

PMA.


FAILURE AS A STEPPING STONE FOR FUTURE SUCCESS

A setback can tell you a lot of things but one need not get depressed over it as it can show the future path of success, writes K UMESH.


“Failure’ is a word nobody likes other than your detractors who would rejoice at such a happening. Yet, this is a phenomenon that has not left anybody untouched. Any result which does not match the expected outcome is termed as a failure. For example, a student scores 95 per cent against expectations of 98 per cent marks in class 12th examination and thus can not get admission in a medical college. This can be termed as a failure.

Similarly, an athlete who trained very hard to run 100 metres race in less than 10 seconds and in almost all the training sessions, he ran sub 10 seconds. But on the day of the finals, he could clock 10.05 seconds and hence, his effort could be termed as a failure. In the corporate world, the examples of failure are: a) Failure in meeting customer expectations on Quality/ Cost/ Delivery.

b) Failure in meeting the expected projected turnover and profits. c) Failure of a product in the market for not being able to meet the expected sales.

Failure is temporary

Thus, failure is a relative term and always measured against a target expectation. One should derive solace that it is possible to convert any type of failure into success. And remember, like failure, success is also relative.

Life is full of uncertainties and failures are inevitable. Despite all the training, standardised methods and expertise built, it is impossible to produce one constant result and every effort produces an outcome which is varying from the previous one. This is the concept of variation and it is strange but true that even machines exhibit this nature of variation and there are many statistical theories on how to control the variations. The variations bring the uncertain nature of the outcome and hence the term uncertainty. Uncertainty is associated with us in our personal and professional lives and it can be brought by internal and external environments associated with us.

Uncertainty brings both success and failure and only the frequency of occurrence of success and failure can make a statement about how well or ill-prepared was the individual or the organisation in meeting and reducing that uncertainty.

Tackle uncertainty and risk to gain in life. There can be various approaches to tackle uncertainties:

a) Avoid arena of uncertainty: In this situation, one would be content with the status quo and thinks it as the best policy to avoid failure. Such a type of people and organisation are stagnant and do not grow. The rewards are none for being stagnant but there is an increasing risk of becoming non-competitive and obsolete and hence the very notion of avoiding risk, proves to be wrong as now larger risks haunt.

b) Forced into uncertainty: This is a situation where the individual or the organisation is forced into uncertainty and the approach is to come out of the situation at the earliest.


c) Treat uncertainty as an opportunity: This is the best approach and most frequently adopted by successful organisations and individuals. The rewards are very high and the whole attitude is positive. People with such characters are called ‘entrepreneur’ and organisations with such character are called as ‘enterprise’.

Strategies to overcome failure

Theories of managerial economics say that profit is the reward for risk-taking and working in an atmosphere of uncertainty. Great leaders always challenge uncertainty and take risks to grow themselves and organisations in an environment of uncertainty which sometimes may result in failures. It is this quality of leaders and character of the enterprise to fight back, learn lessons and quickly take steps to overcome failures, which results in great success stories. Each one has his own ways to tackle and turn the failures into successes. We shall discuss the method to overcome failure in the PDCA method of handling failures.

a) Failure is a temporary setback: Failures always bring some kind of setback which can be in terms of time loss, opportunity loss, prestige loss, revenue loss and so on, and the ability to recover depends upon the extent and nature of setback. One thing is certain that it is possible to make a comeback in most of the cases. An analogy can be established with metals which when put under any stress, deform. But as soon as the stress is removed, they come back to their original position. In short, failures are temporary hence, this should always leave some chance to fight back and this ability is known as ‘resilience’.

b) Accept the failures and start working on them: Do not waste time in accepting failures. It may be a perceived failure unsubstantiated with data but should not be ignored. Many times, we try to camouflage the failure by showing past data and improvement with respect to that. But, that is only saving the skin for the time being. What helps is the immediate acceptance of failure and then planning a strategy to overcome it. Time is too critical a factor while tackling failure and hence should be treated with a lot of sensitivity.

c) Objective approach: Failures are not the end of the world as they provide an opportunity to learn and make further improvements. Only those people who take initiatives and decisions, take the risk of failing and such people are respected. Sometimes, they may go wrong but good leaders always go up. Accepting responsibility, builds credibility and acceptability in the team. In crucial times, blame game does not help but the whole focus should be on solving the problem which builds great team spirit to overcome any problem.

d) Do not panic, rather collect objective data: Failures sometimes bring very adverse response from the customer and from within the organisation. More so, in this world of emails and mobiles phones where everybody wants to communicate and contribute, the usual reaction is that of panic and haste and it prompts a person handling the failure to also panic just to show that the problem is somehow tackled. However, the best way is to collect objective data which will quantify and classify the failure in a measurable way. By doing so, the improvements also can be measured.

If the actual results and the expected results are not being met on some occasions and shows small gaps, the failure can be attributed to some definite causes which need to be identified and plugged.

But if, there are repeated instances where there is a substantial gap between the actual and the expected, then the questions about the individuals or the organisation’s strategy and capability may arise. It indicates that the strengths have been overestimated and in such cases, a realistic planning or realignment of the strategies may help.

e) React with speed, communicate and work with other’s support: It is important to show that the speed of response is fast and this can be done by communicating the people affected with the failure that the failure is not ignored and being attacked by a team consisting of people relevant to the failure.

f) Identity process and set target: Do not attack the failure in an unplanned manner. Rather set a well-defined process for attacking the failure which will use statistical and scientific tools and set targets for improvements. The targets must be SMART (Specific Measurable Ambitious Realistic Time-bound).

g) Analyse failure and determine cause: It is important to understand the mode and the cause of failure. The failure mode will validate the failure area and it needs to be analysed in details to find out the exact cause which is resulting in the failure. Finding the root cause is crucial as further actions are based on it which may involve some cost also. This is important to avoid any repeat failures which may be costly but also damaging for the credibility of the individual or the organisation.

h) Decide and take corrective action: After determination of the root cause, one has to decide about the corrective action and after that it must be implemented immediately.

i) Review, assess and verify results: It is critical that the decided corrective action are correct and final otherwise the management and the customer will loose faith. It is vital to review, assess and verify the effects of modification which can be seen through a limited exercise or simulated results.

j) Standardise solution and learning: Once the failure is overcome, make sure that the gains are not slipped away and so, controls are regularised and the measures standardised along with the learnings so that failures of similar nature do not happen again and the learnings can be used as a preventive measure.

k) Enjoy the success: At the end, it is important to motivate people by complimenting or rewarding them.

l) Keep a positive attitude and improve on a continuous basis.


The above Article was taken from Deccan Herald News paper online Edition and all credit goes to Author K UMESH.

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may182005/avenues1445212005517.asp

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