Businesses, including small businesses, make mistakes all the time. Some of these mistakes are petty and the person who makes them in the small business apologises, feels bad and the business owner moves on. Other mistakes are more serious and can lead to disastrous consequences, even closure. Just think about it for a moment, if your cash flow dries up, especially in this economy, and you can’t get funds to resuscitate your business, the mistake you made in managing your cash will have the potential to put you out of business.
Some businesses employee the wrong people who make mistakes that they try to cover up and when found out it can be too late to do anything about it. Hiring mistakes include bringing aboard people who you think are honest but are actually finding ways to take money from your business illegally. A bookkeeper, for example, stole money from a small business over time and it was one of the reasons why this business after 30 years of operation had to shut its doors. Another trusted employee, worked in a small retail business for almost 15 years, but she was taking cash out from the business daily. Fortunately, a trap was set for her and she was caught red handed. Luckily, although she had taken thousands from the business over the years, it had not had a life-threatening impact on the business.
What’s your view of making mistakes? How do you treat yourself and the employees who make mistakes in your business? Do you use the mistakes as an opportunity for further learning or do you have a low tolerance for mistake making and mistake makers?
When you are starting out from scratch, trying to make and test a new product or service that you wish to earn an income from, you can be guaranteed of one thing – you are not going to get it all right, you are definitely going to make mistakes. How are you going to view those mistakes? Will you view them as learning opportunities or failure?
You see, if you view mistakes as opportunities for learning you will progress faster towards your goals and objectives. A guided missile gets to its target through a series of corrections rather than going in one straight line to its destination. These self corrections bring the guided missile back to its roadmap or mapped out trajectory, continually setting it back on course. If you view your mistakes, as a series of corrections that are leading you toward your goal, mistakes can actually be a way to guide you towards your eventual goal.
If you wish to start something from scratch, take a new promising business idea from mere conception, through product testing and development and eventual market introduction, you are guaranteed to make many mistakes along the way. Although these mistakes will teach you much, you also need to find a way to anticipate or reduce mistakes so that you do not waste too much time and money. Time and money are always limited in any entrepreneurs life.
You may be interested in a guide and resource “Breakthrough Ideas”, which will help you reduce mistakes and risk along the way taking an idea and turning it into a viable product or service. Don’t make a mistake and forget to get yourself a copy.