One of my favorite professors in business school, Rob Adams, has a great saying: the key to being a successful entrepreneur is fast failures. In his experience, it takes most entrepreneurs five tries before they hit on the homerun idea and get the right team in place to execute it. So, the key is to not waste time on the wrong idea. Figure out quickly if it’s going to work and if not, move on. Many of my MBA colleagues and I discovered that the fast failures concept applied to just about every aspect of life, and it’s a wonderfully freeing idea to view failures as stepping stones.

I’ve been thinking about fast failures a lot during this week – my first in the “new venture” of my career at GE Capital. In this case, success to me isn’t necessarily the homerun idea. Success in my view, in the short term, is more about figuring out how I can add value. How can I help my new assignment leader (AL) and his team? How can I be relevant?

This is why I am so grateful that, during ECLP training, it was constantly stressed that in this program, you are expected to take some personal risks. Put yourself out there. Speak up. Provide a fresh perspective. Of course, a big part of being relevant is asking a ton of questions and actively listening to the answers. I’m trying to spend a lot of my time in these first few weeks talking to people in my business about what they’re working on and what their problems are. But I’m also putting concrete things together and getting them in front of my AL and team members for genuine feedback. Though my attempts to add value may not be on the mark, they’re certainly stepping stones on the path to being relevant. Hopefully the homerun idea comes later…

Posted by Kathleen