Building a Successful Strategy

According to Alan Quasha, founder and president of Quadrant Management, mistakes can be an excellent educational tool, if you take the time to learn from them.  Many people are asking how so many people with reputations for good judgment and savvy financial sense could have helped bring us to the enormous financial crisis we are now embroiled in? But Quasha believes there is a more important question: “What can be learned from this mess?”

Acknowledging that mistakes happen is the first step to learning. No one is perfect and mistakes are an inevitable part of life. Some people would even say that mistakes are a good thing. To quote the legendary UCLA baseball coach John Wooden, “The team that makes the most mistakes wins.”

Mistakes become a problem when otherwise intelligent people or organizations do not acknowledge that there is a likelihood of a mistake happening, perhaps due to arrogance.  Because of this blind spot they don’t plan for or correctly measure downside risk; or they ignore information that is contrary to a decision that has been made based on preconceived beliefs.

An object look at history shows that success comes from moving on in expectation of experiencing mistakes, not by “playing it safe.” To be successful you must plan for mistakes, learn from them quickly, and use that new found knowledge to plan a new, successful strategy.