Today, our question is: What is the best way to keep the company successful? The following is the reply of ClickTale CEO Thar Schwartz.
If I want to give my employees a piece of advice, I want them to fully understand that if you want to succeed, you must first experience failure. It seems unreasonable to suggest that employees experience failure before success, but I can guarantee that it is absolutely reasonable. If you want to run a good company, you can tell your team members to do their best. But if you want to run a great company, you must make higher demands on employees. You should allow them to break through their own boundaries, and the only way to do this is to encourage them to experience failure.
This is because you are bound to experience failure when pursuing truly original ideas. This has been proved countless times by history. In addition, failure is also the first step to the birth of creativity. Bill Gates knows this. Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton also knew this. Van Gogh, Dickens and even J.K. Rowling all know that failure is the key to turning a good idea into a wonderful idea.
Therefore, I will not only encourage employees to experience failure, but also ask them to do so. Every employee of ClickTale knows that they can put forward any ideas that flash in their mind during brainstorming meetings, company meetings and strategic activities. The plans they put forward to completely reform the customer experience can be crazy and far fetched, but they know that if the company agrees to put these plans into practice, even if they fail in the end, they will not face any punishment. This is because I believe in the 1:4 rule, that is, every employee who really drives himself to think creatively will experience at least one failure for every four successes. On the contrary, if they succeed every time, leaders need to carefully study their performance.
So, how can we create a reassuring environment so that employees can face failure calmly? Frankly speaking, you can create such an environment at will. In ClickTale, we are more willing to adopt a traditional way, that is, we are not stingy with praise. Praise an employee's failed attempt at the company meeting, and emphasize their courage, creative thinking and enterprising spirit in putting forward ideas and trying. You can also take a more basic approach, such as providing financial incentives, desserts, or combining positive factors that conform to the company's unique corporate culture. The reward method itself is not important. What is important is to create an appropriate environment to truly encourage employees to break through themselves and further.
In today's extremely competitive market environment, real innovation is very scarce. Employees are eager to express themselves and worry about how to keep their jobs. Therefore, they need appropriate encouragement from their superiors so that they can confidently think creatively. If you want to achieve real success, you must actively create such a "safety net" to encourage and reward failure. Because only when employees can safely experience failure, can you get rid of the shackles and achieve real success.