As an entrepreneur, a business owner of over 20 years, I have been relatively successful in a financial sense, however, if you use quality of life (QOL) and long-term fulfillment as a metric, my experience has been substantially less than average.
While it could be argued that the environment I started in where it initially flourished and then my business gradually deteriorated only due to political interference and a massively declining economy (South Africa) – working against my growth (and ultimately would have destroyed any prospect for success), that would be a partial excuse and a cop-out. I could have acted sooner.
Individuals need to claim responsibility for their failures as well as their successes including consequences of not adapting soon enough or even inadvertently procrastinating due to being an unrealistic idealist.
Optimizing business effectiveness and better planning and life management is something I’ve seen many entrepreneurs, managers and employees neglecting. Those who fail to recognize their failures, their shortcomings are doomed to repeat them.
Mistakes only become weaknesses when we don’t learn from them. While the idea is not to “fail often” to succeed as this is not productive as it wastes time, some experiences and observing the failures of others can serve to our personal advantage and life improvement.
Anyone who does not take stock, reflect on performance, adjust with the times, try to understand changes caused by technology advancements are stunt their growth as individuals and adversely impact their life.
Many of personal observations on shortcomings were due to the dismissing the value of a formal format of education and understanding of the entire scope of a technology, neglecting dedicated focus for studying, delaying growth by not implementing effective administration and hence carelessly embracing inefficient management and operating procedures.
While it is true that it could be argued I was experienced at trouble-shooting and problem-solving as I read and frequented considerably more Information Technology than many of my colleagues and my employees taking time to dedicate a block of time to an actual study of a certain topic was often neglected.
Having a talent in a certain field and willingness to work are not enough to succeed. You need focus. This appears from my experience to be the “norm” among professional in the rapidly advancing and ever-changing ICT industry as well as other sectors.
This site and the soon to be established YouTube channel is to be dedicated to learning and improving skills, techniques and offer advice to improve in life management applying initially directly to the ICT industry, but these skills are essential to grow as a person or a business.
I will share my failures, my successes, valuable lessons that I’ve learned from mentors as well as those peers that I’ve passed and seen fail along the way. I hope that you follow me on this venture.
~ Craven Coetzee
ACQUIGNOSIS on YouTube (content coming soon) – Click Here