How to face failure

WHAT THEY DON'T TEACH YOU AT B-SCHOOL

Good business schools boost your self-confidence by providing you with excellent business tools "" discounted cash flows, game theory, organisational behaviour, financial accounting, and so on "" all of which can help you manage and understand diverse work situations.

So when I finished business school, I was filled with the confidence of being able to handle the toughest problems and always emerge a winner. After all, we had cracked every case-study thrown at us.

We understood the mistakes made along the way and learnt the best practices of successful corporates around the globe. Thus armed, I returned to India with the objective of running my own company and a vow: never to be an employee again.

I had decided to start a venture in manufacturing diamond jewellery for export. No sooner than we started, the Government of India banned the export of jewellery containing gold. And that was it!

All the case-studies had not prepared me for such an eventuality. Naturally, the venture failed. Education assumes optimistic outcomes, starting with passing out from college, so we had not been taught how to handle failure.

So there I was, a young 30-year-old, newly married, fresh out of a premier B-school, with the rug pulled from under my feet. There was little capital left, except for a roof over our head, which was courtesy my dad. So what's next? Should I give up and take up a job, or try again?

Let me share a framework that worked for me. First, I took a break with my wife, just to get away from the "scene of the crime", so to speak. It allowed me to clear my mind.

Then I resisted the pressure to take the first thing that came along by allowing some time to think about why things happened as they did. It also gave me an opportunity to talk with friends and well-wishers who had nothing to do with the business.

I could deliberate on what I did wrong, and what I did right, allowing me to answer the key question "am I a failure as an entrepreneur or can I succeed?" When I resolved that my fundamental approach to being an entrepreneur was valid, I could move ahead with confidence in myself and in my ability to succeed.

It was very important to treat the business failure as a lesson, as a step in the game of life, to be able to persist with my objectives, with a determination that drew from the inner strength of deep introspection.

So when faced with a "game changing" failure, whether as an entrepreneur or as a manager, one needs to take a break, think through one's objectives and lessons learnt, before moving onto the next phase, with persistence and a renewed determination to succeed.

Manu Parpia graduated from Harvard Business School