Experimenting Your Way to Success

Dont be afraid of failure. From failure comes knowledge and experience that will lead to your next great success. Experience can be gained from any bad situation. In fact, the best business advice I ever received was a direct quote from Sam Walton, repeated to me by a key employee, Everyone makes bad hiring decisions. The trick is recognizing them quickly and getting rid of them. As long as youre not afraid to fail, you can experiment in a variety of different areas and still benefit in the long run.

Try things that no one else is doing on a small scale. If you fail, analyze why you failed. Then modify your efforts accordingly and try again. Encourage employees to experiment as well; let them know that it is okay to fail as long as the failure wasnt due to a lack of effort and whatever is learned from that effort is shared with the entire organization. This experimentation and boldness has certainly proven successful over the years . Wal-Mart has the most efficient supply-chain in human history due to this concept.