At BFF we love to celebrate good news about enterprising families who are enjoying success. But life is full of ups and downs and sometimes there are painful failures. It was a great encouragement when Professor Peter Vogel talked with us about how failures may, in fact, be necessary for fostering entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial vitality.
We probably all know people who aren’t accustomed to failure and who take it badly when things finally go wrong. They blame themselves excessively, they beat themselves up for not being perfect, they lose confidence and they may become depressed.
So it makes a lot of sense when Professor Vogel, talking about how to develop intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs, advised:
Don’t just flood money into their pockets, let them learn how to manage the money that they have, let them experience what it’s like to run out of money from time to time, to really be conscious about money.
He added:
Let them experience risk, let them learn how to manage risk, and let them at least accept that failure happens. Expose them to failure, let them fail, let them learn from their failures. Also let them observe your failures because everybody fails.
Regular acceptance of small failures can build up tolerance for the setbacks of life. With greater emotional stability, budding entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs will be happier to pick themselves up after a fall, dust themselves down, and get going again.
Winston Churchill once observed:
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Wise words. Failure is part of life’s rich experience and it can often be a great teacher!
BFF subscribers can find out more by logging into businessfamilies.com and watching our video How Business Families Can Foster Intrapreneurship in the Rising Generation.
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