My Favorite Mistake

Business parallels life. If you own or operate a business, your strengths and weaknesses affect your success in similar ways to their effect in your personal life.  Why?  Because people are people, and for business owners, work-life balance is a myth. 

If you are a great communicator in your personal relationships, you’ll likely be a great communicator in your professional ones.  If you are disorganized personally, you’ll be disorganized in running your business.  In larger organizations, this parallel starts to widen, because personal habits give way to Process.  But, in a small to mid-sized business, our experience is that you can never expect to separate the personality of the owner from the culture of the business.  Culture always flows down the top of the pyramid.

We all acknowledge our imperfections and, if we’re mature individuals, we recognize that the more important thing is to assess mistakes honestly, learn from them, and hopefully grow stronger from that process.  Going into business for yourself means accepting risk – and the number one risk to your business is you.  You are also (probably) the greatest asset in your business, especially if you are able to learn, improve, and rebound from errors and setbacks. 

So, we can say that some mistakes are good.  They seem horrible and painful at the time, but every successful business owner has a story of a setafailure that turned into something better, stronger, and more valuable than it was before.

What is your favorite mistake in your business life?  How did you recognize, and what did you do about it?  Nothing can stop a leader who is determined to keep learning – and sometimes, we can learn from each other.  If you are so inclined, share your Favorite Mistake with us – briefly, no names or confidential stuff – just your story.