As some of you may or may not know, I recently started a company called The Sales Effect. I started the company because I wanted to revolutionize the way sales is perceived, both by those who sell and those who interact with sales people. My mission is to change this perception, one person at a time - just like the 'butterfly effect', where very small changes can spread and effect all things around it.
One of the keys I have found to starting this mission is failure. In fact, failure has been the single greatest ally I could have ever found. I looked back at all that I have done and I found that without failure, or risk of failure, I would never have known if there were better ways of doing things. Even more alarming, if I didn't risk failing, I would have never known how much I could have actually done.
What I am seeing with many is that they are literally petrified about failure. They are so scared about being singled out and being told they are wrong, they find ways to avoid this risk. Zig Ziglar once said if you give a person a large frying pan, they will find out a way to make it smaller. Why? So they can fry smaller fish - there is less risk of failure and it's safer.
Where did this come from? I think it came from our schooling system because what was rewarded was compliance, not making errors and staying within the confines of what was tested. However, in my opinion, this mentality has locked us into a box from which it is very hard to escape. It has chained us to ensure the boss or our customers don't get angry with us, it causes us to not have the difficult conversations, but rather, what we aim to do is get a pat on the back and go home.
With this way of doing things, we will never endeavor to do things better, to seek out creative ways of doing things, because the only thing we want is to not fail and to desperately hold on to what we have. But these walls are fading and they are crumbling. If you are not failing, if you are not struggling to make a new map, then you are coasting - and the only way you can coast is downhill.
The price of admission to work at my company and those I work with is this: failure and change. If you work for me and you are not failing or changing something - then you will be fired. If I work with you and you are not failing or changing something, whether it be in the way you are trying to interact with others, the way you deliver your service, then we will stop. Why? Because I want the fear to work in the opposite direction. I want others to fear NOT failing more than failing - because then, and only then, will amazing things happen.
I have a saying that says, "The only way to coast is downhill." We can't continually do the same things anymore, we can't hold on to the same, we have to climb. We have to go outside the boundaries and look at things in ways they were never looked at before. Just take the goalie mask. You would think this would be the most obvious thing to invent in the game but it took over 50 years for the goalie mask to be invented. All it took was one person, Jaques Plante, who said "I'm sick of getting hit in the head with a puck!"
Looking at things differently and changing the way 'the game' is played is hard; it's very hard. But unless you are prepared to do the hard work, unless you are willing to fail, then you will become a commodity, with which there will be endless rows of the same to which others can choose. Become something, become amazing, remarkable and memorable. Only then will you enjoy true, lasting and sustainable growth.
I wish you all the success in the world, now go out and BE the difference!
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