By Gulshan Verma,
GM SEA & India, Outbrain
Alibaba’s Founder and CEO, Jack Ma, was famously rejected from more than 30 jobs. “I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted. I was the only guy who was not,” recalls Ma.
The ratio of success to failure depends on perseverance and whether you take failures in your stride.
Coming closer to home, I once asked a leading Indian business school dean what would happen if they took more applicants from a non-engineering background. “The quality would go down,” he confidently told me. “Engineers are the smartest ones in India and so by taking more non-engineering students, a business school cannot be more successful.”
While I believe there is nothing wrong with graduating from top institutions like the IIM and so on, after spending nearly a decade working and running teams in India, the two qualities that really stand out for me are the ability to take a risk and ultimately learn from failure.
And this is something a classroom cannot teach.
Here’s an example: One of my team members was once a nationally-ranked karate champion. In order to make his dream work and support his family, he would wake up at 4 am to deliver flowers so that he could spend the day training. Ultimately, he joined a corporate job but that dedication and loyalty taught me more about his ability and determination to overcome obstacles than any degree or certificate he could ever have obtained.
My former manager, Prashant Mehta (now a successful Venture Capitalist at Lightbox) has guided me through my career. He let me make my own mistakes, but was always there to support me. He thereby set an example that I try to follow. And today, looking back, it’s those learnings that have shaped the professional I am today.
Banish the terrifying what-ifs and never let failure hold you back from realizing your full potential. We need to be able to look at failure not just as negative but as an experience we can all learn from.
Feedback: gverma@outbrain.com