When Do You Declare Failure?

When Do You Declare Failure?

I’ve learned that failure is highly subjective and is more of a feeling than a reflection of reality.

That doesn’t mean that it’s any less valid or painful.

I have struggled most of my life with low self-worth. Every time I feel like I’ve failed, it affects me to my core and can be devastating. For many years I was deathly afraid of failing. I avoided situations where the potential for failure was high.

I’m terrible at tennis, so I rarely play with people clearly better than I am – which is 90% of all people who play tennis. I have resigned when certain work situations were no longer lining up to make me feel I could be a success.

Declaring failure is easier when you don’t live in fear of failing.

But when do you actually declare failure? Or better: How do you know when to declare failure?

Quite simply you declare fail when you’ve run out of options for turning around a difficult situation.

So how do you know you’ve run out of options?

First, you have to be able to create multiple plans.

I have a client – the former owner of an internet of things company – I consider to be an expert in doing this.

For many reasons, he had gotten himself and his firm backed into a corner.

1. Even though his company was growing and making money, my client was living payroll to payroll, never entirely sure how he was going to scrape together enough money to pay his staff. He often simply asked his investors for more money.
2. In the process his stake in the company had scrolled down to about 8%.
3. After our first year working together, he had to redo his cap table to buy himself time to get new products into the marketplace.

Anyone who has had to redo a cap table, knows how frustrating and time consuming this is. But he had other options. Unfortunately, most of them proved very difficult to make happen.

Then luck struck. Just at that moment, his industry segment was going through a wave of consolidation and he was approached by several larger companies interested in buying his company.

Six months later he was several million dollars wealthier and his company became a division of a multi-national corporation.

I’m not sure what he would have done had he not been offered this opportunity at that moment. But it happened and he didn’t fail.